As I read today’s Wall Street Journal in route to an engagement in Houston, it was Section R that contained all of the pertinent factoids about the inauguration of President Obama.
Yes, I was interested in the story by the Bush twins, Playing House in the White House, addressed to Sasha and Malia, about being a kid in the White House – it was a well written piece.
Of equal interest was the story about When Inaugural Speeches Work and the pain staking lengths that presidents and their speech writers go through to insure that their message will be ‘one for the ages’.
And yet the item that grabbed my attention was the chart on R-4 that ran down ‘The United States 2009, by the Numbers’.
I’m a sucker for data comparisons, I don’t know why.
In this piece it showed various statistics at the point of the inauguration of the last 6 Presidents.
As an example, consumer price inflation was 3.8% in 2008 versus the year before the Regan presidency when it was 13.5%
And so the statistics unfolded. [click to continue…]
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