US National Debt in the Last 50 Years - graph

sources:
www.testing.com...
www.marktaw.com...


Can anyone see the trend of the Debt falling under one president, against rising immediately after another president takes over?

Take into account the recent war going on as well.

A possible explanation is that Presidents do all of their big-budget spending during the first half of their term, whereas in the second half they cut back in order to have a good national debt in place for re-election. You can debate how much the Clinton drop and Bush rise have to do with the dot-com bubble (and it's burst) and the war.