At a Tuesday campaign event in Baltimore, responding to Republican charges that he exploded the debt, President Obama lamented, “It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini all that stuff, and then just as you’re sitting down — they leave — and accuse you of running up the tab.”

The very concept of grading a president on a curve for the conditions he inherited could cut both ways. For instance, when President Bush was sworn into office, while the economy was much stronger than when Obama took over, there were still headwinds from the bursting of the tech bubble months earlier. More significantly, al Qaeda had grown steadily during the 1990s, which all culminated with the Sept. 11 attacks.