What a load of crap. The best condition is a dollar that is fairly stable, not overly strong or weak, both domestically and on the foreign exchange market.
If they run that chart back to the 1960's, or even back to the 1930's one can see the dollar collapsed and never recovered, so anybody regardless of their position can make a case depending on the time period chosen.
Why people, especially politicians have such a fondness for exports, I don't know. Perhaps there is a genetic bias for mercantilism. Even countries that are known as big exporters like Japan, have an export market that is a little over 10%. Doing something that's good for exports only ignores the other 90% of the economy. When one subtracts out the negative effects on imports (higher prices), the economic impact is nil, or negative for a country like America.
Articles like this are making apologies for one of the worst economic presidents we've had, though one of the luckiest. If it weren't for congressman Bill Thomas saving his butt in 2003, he never would have won a second term.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g5a/current/
THE AVERAGE RATES OF EXCHANGE IN 2006 TOGETHER
WITH COMPARABLE FIGURES FOR OTHER YEARS.
MAJOR AVERAGE CURRENCY EXCHANGE RATE
MAR 1973 = 100
2006 82.46
2005 83.71
2004 85.37
2003 92.99
Clearly lower than 1973 but hardly ‘collapsed”