Book excerpt: The authors cut through party bias to present the quantifiable facts about how modern presidents have performed on critical national issues Politicians and the media spend a lot of time telling Americans how the presidents and their administrations are performing, but this analysis always skews along party lines. In Presimetrics, Kimel and Kanell take a fresh look at modern politics by gathering data from numerous government sources in order to compare and rank presidential performance on critical issues, from employment and health care to taxes and family values. The results frequently defy expectations: Reagan, godfather of neoconservatives, increased the federal workforce more than any president since LBJ Clinton, a hero to Democrats, cut funding for the NEA by a larger percentage than any other president Nixon/Ford outperformed all administrations on Democratic issues like Federal spending on social programs The lively text clearly explains how various policies of each administration affect the data, and fascinating information graphics lend even greater depth to the discussion, showing at a glance how multiple administrations stack up.