EVERY other presidential term has seen the part of America's economy that grows as a result of improved productivity SHRINK, and some like Bush's second, by a whole lot. But, to be fair, it's been shrinking under Obama, too.
And that's because Washington has completely forgotten (or chooses to ignore, anyway) the fact that not all spending by the federal government has the same return on investment. Many things that the government spends money on - war being by far the best example - have low or even negative ROIs. It costs America good money to build bombs that are detonated in foreign lands. And we get NOTHING in return, and certainly not in economic terms.
Unless and until America begins to invest in itself again, it is most assuredly doomed to fall ever farther in the ranks that compare America to the rest of the world. 
And to hear the GOP game plan of slashing GOOD types of Federal Spending (they want to cut funding for the Patent Office for FSM's sake!) while cheerleading more military spending and tax cuts to the already rich is depressing indeed.  

Proof indeed that the American GOP party, is its own worst enemy.