my humble opinion is that rising oil prices threw cold water on a heated over leveraged economy. Now, you can argue everyone was caught up in the "we've conquered the business cycle" rhetoric but both sides were getting caught up in the hubris, gasoline prices act like interest rates even more than interest rates, a real, needed commodity that all are dependent on. It goes up a little, a lot of pizza delivery guys loose their job, it goes up a lot then lots of people who bought homes can't afford their commute to a job.

Point being that gas was an exogenous variable, so yeah, "presidents" probably helped the over-leveraging thing along but that also tends to be human nature, the longer it goes the less cautious people become. So, just another business cycle.

I would argue the economy is resuming now because that's how long it's taken to unwind a lot of positions since 2018. A little kick might help, so maybe the last election helped but didn't really stack the wood, (Not saying the previous president stacked the wood, the market did.