Journalistic irrelevance

From the article mentioned in the previous post.

Just the increase in the debt ceiling over the past three years is nearly 2 1/2 times the entire federal debt accumulated between 1776 and 1980.

I could give you a laundry list of reasons why this sentence is potentially misleading to the uneducated reader and ultimately irrelevant to the matter at hand, but I won't.

First of all, it's closer to 2 1/4 than than 2 1/2 times more, but now we're splitting hairs.

The appropriate comparison for the first Clinton administration is as follows: The debt ceiling rose by 2.9 times the total amount of federal debt accumulated from 1776 to 1972 (eight years earlier).

The second Clinton administration was much better. The debt ceiling only rose by 70% of the total amount of debt accumulated from 1776 to 1976. However, all told, the 8 years of Clinton added as much to the debt ceiling as the entire amount of federal debt accumulated from 1776 to 1985.

Before you ask why I'm comparing all 4 years of these terms and the article says they are only looking at the last 3 years, that's because they really are looking at the whole 4 year Bush term. There was no increase in the debt limit during the first year, only in the last three. They don't tell you that. I did.

The point here is not to put down or raise up the Clinton presidency (or for that matter the Bush presidency). As you can see, his two terms were like night and day when it came to the budget (for a number of reasons).

Can you see that playing these sorts of games with statistics doesn't tell you anything and could be very misleading?

I wouldn't accept this lame excuse for analysis from a college freshman. If you don't understand compound growth, you'll be sucked in by statements like those above.