Again, it's the one in the driver's seat who catches the blame and gets the credit. That's how it works.
The average American voter is pretty uninformed. They're not going to consider what economists have been saying for the last 12 years. They simply won't care. They're going to look at who was in the White House when it finally all went to shit, and blame him.
Remember how liberals reacted to 9/11? They blamed George Bush. "How could he let this happen?" they queried.
Well, the reality is that every single on of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country while Bill Clinton was in office. Bush's policies didn't cause nor allow 9/11, but libs saw to it that he certainly caught the blame for it...