Michael Kinsley: The Spreadsheet

Numbers don't lie, but sometimes they mislead.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 17, 2006, at 11:47 AM ET

Either the Republicans are getting better or my mathematics is getting worse.

Every year about this time, I celebrate the release of the president's budget and his economic report by pouring a lot of the numbers from these documents into a spreadsheet. My goal is to reach an objective, scientific conclusion about which party governs better. (Look, everybody needs a hobby.) The theory is that over 30 or 50 or 80 years—however many the budget documents choose to record, and it varies—any special circumstances, such as war, will average themselves out. Or if they don't, any general claims about the superiority of one party to another are meaningless, which is also a possibility.