This is a striking graph, using numbers from the White House Office of Management and Budget, to demonstrate the size of our nation’s budget deficits as a percentage of GDP.

While you can’t completely ascribe one President’s deficit to that President’s policies…after all, much of the economy and the policies driving spending are in place when a President takes office…the question we ask ourselves as voters is “are this President’s policies making us more fiscally sustainable, or less fiscally sustainable.”

The second President Bush clearly took a number of steps that pushed us in the wrong direction. And President Obama has clearly accelerated us in the wrong direction.

The next President – whether elected in 2012 or 2016 – will be hitting the brakes and changing direction.

In fact, one could argue that even if President Obama is re-elected, he may be forced by the laws of fiscal gravity to do the same.

Time will tell.