Many conservative economic pundits, including Republican nominee Mitt Romney, have been staking the claim that the Obama Presidency has been an economic calamity.

Standing in front of a closed gypsum plant in Lorain, Ohio back in April, Mitt Romney asserted, “had the president’s economic plans worked … it would be open by now, but it’s still empty, and it underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regards to getting this economy going again.”

Yet the facts do not support such rhetoric; Romney and other conservative politicos are absolutely off the mark. If we compare Barack Obama’s first term to conservative icon Ronald Reagan’s first term, the Obama administration outperforms Reagan’s on most key economic measures.

Many Americans are too young to remember, or perhaps have forgotten, how frenetic President Reagan’s first term was.

Reagan, like Obama, inherited an economic mess from his predecessor (Carter), and was so beleaguered by the economy that as late as August of 1983, when unemployment stood at 9.5%, he did not believe he would be re-elected. Reagan’s objective was to implement his theory of “Reaganomics,” which was based on stimulating the economy with tax cuts, tax credits and accelerated depreciation (supply-side economics).

Reagan’s primary catalyst to achieve this objective was the passage of the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) in July of 1981, which introduced phased-in reductions in marginal tax rates that were substantial. ERTA was however a “bridge too far” and failed miserably creating massive budget deficits and weakening the economy, culminating in a severe recession which lasted through 1982.