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Arnold Kling explains the Economic Attribution Error:

That is when someone attributes the behavior of key macroeconomic indicators, such as the exchange rate, the Budget deficit, or the unemployment rate, to the fundamental character traits of government officials, such as the President or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. In fact, the values of these variables depend mostly on the context provided by the private sector - the influence of fiscal and monetary policy tends to be vastly overstated.

But there are some things you can hold a politician accountable for:

I want to make clear that while I am arguing against making the economic attribution error, I am not giving President Bush a "pass" on economic policy. The Bush economic policy can be evaluated on its own merits. I would give the administration a bad grade on trade, because of the steel tariffs. I would give the administration a bad grade on fiscal policy, because it is making no attempt to identify and implement spending reductions, and because it has not pursued any sort of "exit strategy" for Medicare, which threatens to capture a huge share of GDP for the government. I would give the administration a bad grade on energy policy, because the proposal to subsidize hydrogen fuel cells shows a failure to understand Oil Econ 101. I would give the administration a bad grade on education policy, because it continues to undermine local control of schools.