The “R” word has assumed a terrifying meaning all out of proportion to reality. No one can mention it except in tones of great foreboding and potential anguish. It evokes images of shuttered factories and long unemployment lines. It stigmatizes inept government that, somehow, has permitted or caused this calamity. The prejudices run so deep that they’re aroused at the faintest prospect of a recession. In fact, most slumps don’t justify such extreme dread, and even if they did, our political leaders can’t prevent them. The next recession shouldn’t be Clinton’s or Gingrich’s. It’s not a partisan event.

Consider three unutterable truths about recessions. The first is that we can’t avoid them. Our economic tools (tax cuts, spending increases, inter-est-rate reductions) are too crude to keep a $7 trillion economy on a steady path of growth. The second truth is worse. It is that the economy actually seems to need slumps. No one likes them, but they weed out weak firms, cause others to raise efficiency and dampen inflationary wage and price behavior, And the last truth is that, once they occur, recessions are usually less ravaging than advertised.

The adjacent table describes the nine postwar recessions. On average, the drop in output (gross domestic product) is 2 percent. Peak unemployment, usually lasting only a few months, has averaged 7.8 percent. At least three recessions were undeniably harsh: those of 1957-58, 1973-75 and 1981-82. But the last two were abnormal in the sense that their severity was a reaction to high inflation, which reached 11 percent in 1974 and 18.8 percent in 1980. Interest rates were raised sharply to squelch price increases; the effects were devastating. But otherwise, postwar recessions have been fairly tame.

This is a historic change. Before World War II, slumps occurred more often and involved greater production losses and higher unemployment. In the Great Depression, which was the worst economic collapse in U.S. history, the economy’s output dropped 88 percent between 1929 and 1933. In the 1920-21 slump, the loss was nearly 9 percent. Economic expansions–periods of rising production and jobs-now last longer. Before World War II, they averaged about two years, estimates the National Bureau of Economic Research. The average since the war has exceeded four years.

In fairness, not all economists believe that business cycles have become much milder. Christina Romer of the University of California, Berkeley, has argued that prewar economic statistics were primitive and overstate the severity and length of slumps. But other economists, reviewing the same statistics, disagree, and even Romer finds that expansions now are much longer than before the war. The real mystery is why business cycles have improved. Have we gotten smarter and prevented slumps?

It’s doubtful, Again, the worst postwar slumps were reactions to the inflation caused by easy money politics intended, perversely, to avoid recessions. Greater postwar stability may stem from deeper changes: the end of the gold standard and adoption of deposit insurance in the 1930s (both made the banking system more stable); the smoothing effect on incomes and spending of federal programs (social security, unemployment insurance); smaller farming and manufacturing sectors (both suffer large production swings).

Whatever the explanation, we don’t yet know enough to keep consumer and business spending growing at a constant pace. At most, the Federal Reserve controls only short-term interest rates and not rates on long-term bonds and mortgages; and in turn interest rates are only one force affecting private spending. Congress can’t shift budget policies quickly, and if it could, the effects might be muted: even $70 billion of tax cuts or spending increases amount to only i percent of GDP, The impact could easily be offset by lower consumption spending, business investment or exports.

Sooner or later, there will be another recession. The question of when turns on the present inventory correction. Everyone agrees that industrial production has slowed because it got ahead of final demand. People weren’t buying all the goods (especially autos) that factories produced, and so the excess supplies are being worked off. Such adjustments often occur. If nothing else happens, the expansion will probably continue. But if the inventory correction triggers major layoffs or depresses economic confidence, a recession might ensue.

In a perfect world, our economy would not slip back a few percentage points every four or five years. But the fact that it does is not usually a tragedy. It’s merely a problem. For a while, there are fewer jobs and more anxiety. That’s about it. Our more serious social problems (crime, family breakdown) exist mainly apart from the business cycle. Nor are slumps typically the fault of our political leaders. They should be judged on what they can do, not what they can’t. So let the recession watch proceed. But can we skip the exaggeration, melodrama and partisan scapegoating?

Postwar Slumps MAXIMUM LENGTH DROP IN UNEMPLOYMENT (MONTHS) GDP[a] 1948-49 11 -1.1% 7.9% 1953-54 10 -2.2 6.1 1957-58 8 -3.3 7.5 1960-61 10 -0.8 7.1 1969-70 11 -0.4 6.1 1973-75 16 -4.1 9.0 1980 6 -2.6 7.8 1981-82 16 -2.8 10.8 1990-91 10 -1.5 7.7 AVERAGE 11 -2.1 7.8