Not that anybody here is under the illusion that the economy under Bush has been anything approaching good, here's a good illustration of how badly it has sucked.  The following chart shows a little less than a decade of S&P 500 performance and is from one of my favorite blogs, the bonddad blog:



See that big red horizontal line he put on there?  That represents the previous peak.  So 7 years after the S&P 500 peaked, the market is finally back to where it started.  Now, with that in mind, also note the following:

1. Because of inflation, the value of the dollar has declined by roughly 20% in that time.  So to really be matching the levels we had in 2000, we'd have to be up around 185 right now. 
   
2. Also, during that time the value of the dollar relative to other currencies has declined.  In 2000 the dollar and the euro were at near parity.  Today it's 1.46 US dollars to 1 euro. 
3. The S&P 500 appears to be meeting resistence right now and looks ripe for a downturn (especially given all the bad economic news)

So, if you bought into an S&P 500 index fund, generally speaking, considered to be a safe long term growth investment, you aren't anywhere near seeing any kind of real return on your investment 7 years after making it.  We'd still need to see a 30 point rise to provide parity in real dollar terms and then you'd still be behind relative to the value of foreign currencies.

Sure, commodity prices have gone through the roof and asset prices (real estate) have also shot up.  But in terms of real value of things being produced and serious business development, we've been going nowhere.