[yummyfajitas]

That's debt held by the public, i.e. bonds. A lot of the debt is owed to old people through the SS system rather than to bondholders through the treasury.

Obviously one can debate the exact definitions of what should constitute debt, but I'm using the following definition: promises to pay out money in the future which will be politically very difficult to renege on.

If you want to look at debt held by the public, Bush had surpluses too (though not as large).

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...