During a final press conference characterized by his trademark petulance, George W. Bush repeated the myth that opened his presidency. Defending his failed stewardship of the economy, President Bush falsely claimed Monday, "I inherited a recession." Sadly for the first MBA president, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the same NEBR which declared the current Bush recession began in December 2007, concluded his first started in March 2001.
Of course, that didn't stop the double-dipping President Bush from pretending otherwise. Responding to a reporter's assertion that "a lot of people, including Republicans, including some members of your own administration, have been disappointed at the execution of some of your ideals, whether Iraq or Katrina or the economy," Bush delivered a whopper made to order in rationalizing the worst eight-year economic performance in modern presidential history:

"In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. And I defended tax cuts when I campaigned, I helped implement tax cuts when I was President, and I will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action. And there's a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts. Who best can spend your money, the government or you? And I have always sided with the people on that issue."

Needless to say, George W. Bush did not inherit a recession from President Clinton. But after eight years of perpetuation by the right-wing propaganda machine, the debunked myth has remained remarkably durable.
Back in 2001 the new Bush administration and its amen corner in the right-wing media weren't shy at all when it came to blaming the sluggish economy that spring on Bill Clinton. While the NEBR determined the George W. Bush's first recession actually began in March 2001, the history of U.S. GDP shows that the traditional definition of recession - two straight quarters of GDP decline - was never met during either the last year of the Clinton presidency or the first of Bush's tenure:

Undeterred, the Republican Party and its echo chamber have for years continued to perpetuate the myth that President Bush "inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton. As Media Matters detailed, the sound bite was introduced before George W, Bush even took the oath of office. On December 3, 2000, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert "I think so" when asked if "we're on the front edge of a recession." Within days, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ("the Bush-Cheney administration should be planning on having inherited a recession as the farewell gift from Clinton") and House Majority Leader Dick Armey ("this new president may inherit a recession") followed suit. By August 2002, Mitch Daniels, Bush's head of the Office of Management and Budget, announced on Fox News:

"He [Bush] inherited that recession from the previous administration. Case is closed."

Predictably, the drumbeat from the Bush team was reproduced with zero distortion from the always reliable media. While Fox News' Sean Hannity made the argument during the November 2002 mid-term election "this president -- you know and I know and everybody knows -- inherited a recession," CNN made the case for him two months earlier. On September 18th, 2002, CNN's John King announced, "That's why the president, in almost every speech, tries to remind voters he inherited a recession." Five days later, his colleague Suzanne Malveaux regurgitated the same line, reporting, "[Bush] took up that very issue earlier today, saying -- reminding voters that the administration inherited the recession."
To be sure, the Republican propaganda effort worked its magic. In 2004, pollster Geoff Garin showed that 62% of Americans believed the demonstrably false claim that an "economic recession actually began during Bill Clinton's administration, before George W. Bush took office."
Now as Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, the right-wing noise machine is at again, though this time with a twist. Literally within hours of his election, conservative mouthpieces including Rush Limbaugh, Fred Barnes and Dick Morris began blaming Obama for the current Bush recession.
Just in case, President Bush launched a final round of myth-making in December 2008. In one of his first exit interviews on ABC, Dubya laughably blamed Bill Clinton for both of the Bush recessions:

"You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President."

Of course, the numbers, unlike the Republicans who willfully ignore them, don't lie. By almost any measure, the American economy is in recession. And this time, there will be no doubt as to its paternity.
This is George W. Bush's recession.