I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the overall health of the economy and how that has progressed or regressed under each regime and how much each president was responsible for it. The economy operates cyclically. There is a business cycle. Policies put in place long ago gave rise to the financial crisis in 2008. It was not GWB's doing. The housing bust caused a catastrophic series of events to happen that could only be stopped by a global central bank effort, the likes of which the world had never previously seen. "Emergency monetary policy" was enacted, interest rates were taken to zero, and the market was flooded with liquidity. This saved the banking system and the economy from collapsing.
But notice, we have never been able to escape from "emergency monetary policy". Notice that interest rates have not been allowed to rise appreciably. Notice that more people are working more jobs to maintain a previous standard of living. Notice that saving is neither encouraged nor rewarded. Notice that businesses have engaged in buying back shares at the expense of investing in growth or investing in their employees. Notice that the GDP has not been able to achieve break-away velocity. Notice the proliferation of zombie companies. Notice the explosion of debt since Clinton and its parabolic rise over the last decade. Notice that there's not even a hint of trying to balance the budget or slow the growth of debt.
The entire sustaining factor for the economic resurgence since the crisis has been the massive, mind-boggling growth of debt, and it is unsustainable. It has had little to do with pro-economic policies. Sure, Bush, Obama, and Trump may espouse or have espoused some good ideas, and maybe they even undertook a few token initiatives. But all of them have injured the overall health of the system and have worked to ensure that it will eventually implode under its own weight of debt.
I'm all for trying to bring manufacturing back, but there are too many reasons why it's beneficial for companies to largely manufacture overseas. I'm all for looking at tax policy. But without cash/debt management, it's useless. It's nothing more than a band-aid.
The bottom line is the debt and our tax and spend mentality. Until ANYONE addresses this central issue, then the rest is largely irrelevant. It is like pushing a boulder uphill. Maybe you can slow its descent, but only a little. We're hurling headlong into another crisis. The Fed can print, the government can spend, and businesses can buy their shares back, using cheap money and make their balance sheets look good. But the cracks are widening, and nobody is doing or has done a single thing to fix it. Not Bush, not Obama, and not Trump. They get no credit in my book for very much of anything in the realm of real economic growth and health. Anything that we have seen in that arena was the result of a cyclical business cycle, fueled by cheap money and ongoing "emergency monetary policy", from which we will never be able to escape.