Expect no miracles from the White House

The economy of the 1990s was like the music of the 1960s: as good as it gets. The job market and stock market soared; poverty and inflation dropped. Bill Clinton wants you to remember how good the good times were. In his speech to the Democratic convention, the former president put the matter simply.

''We tried it our [Democratic] way for eight years. Then we tried it their [Republican] way for four more. By the only test that matters, whether people were better off when we finished than when we started, our way works better."

You can't blame Clinton for a little bragging. A lot of good things happened on his watch. And to imply that a vote for the Democrats will bring back the economy of the 1990s is a nifty bit of political speechmaking. Maybe they can bring back the Beach Boys, too. But the notion that Democrats created the prosperity of the 1990s needs to be reexamined, both for the sake of history and the future. Before we pull the lever in this November's election we should be realistic about what we can expect from a president -- whether his name is Clinton, Bush, or Kerry.

Clinton and his team did some smart things. They embraced free trade in the face of fierce opposition from many Democrats. They skillfully handled economic crises in Mexico and Asia. They took steps to shrink the federal budget deficit, which helped reduce interest rates. With the passage of time, the story of deficit reduction has become like a fish story: the more it is retold the bigger the fish seems to get. Deficit reduction was a decent-sized fish. It wasn't Moby Dick. (I know. Whales aren't fish.)

It is nice to be smart. It is even better to be lucky. Bill Clinton was very lucky. ''Those of us involved in US economic policy during those years benefited from a happy confluence of events," wrote Joseph Stiglitz, a member of the Clinton economic team and the author of ''The Roaring Nineties."

The end of the Cold War freed up resources and made it easier to balance the budget.

Low inflation -- the result of wise Federal Reserve policy, globalization, and deregulation -- allowed interest rates to drop and housing to explode.

Cheap oil worked like a tax cut and gave consumers more money to spend. The technology revolution, a long time in coming, spurred investment and boosted productivity.

''Technology was largely a private sector phenomenon," said Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York.

All of the above created the greatest bull market in history, which we know, with the benefit of hindsight, went on far too long. Like the government, the private sector can screw things up pretty badly.

President Bush had the misfortune of showing up just as the boom gave way to bust. ''The economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office," wrote Stiglitz.

Bush's bad luck has also included a miserable stock market and sky-high oil prices. He is no more responsible for them than Clinton was for the bull market or cheap oil. In politics and life, timing counts for an awful lot.

I don't want to push this argument too far. Should he be elected, John Kerry will have plenty to do on the economic front.

He can start to repair the damage Bush has done to the budget deficit; he can initiate an honest dialogue about the future of Social Security and Medicare; he can put in place policies that gradually will reduce the nation's consumption of energy; he can do much more to help those who have been displaced by changing technology or the outsourcing of jobs.

What he won't be able to do is abruptly change the fortunes of the US economy. Given the large budget deficit, he will have fewer tools to work with than many of his predecessors. ''Economies are like large ships: they cannot be turned around quickly," wrote Stiglitz.

My advice: Vote for Kerry but don't expect any miracles.

Charles Stein is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at stein@globe.com.