Your recollection is, as the article is trying to point out, shaped by the news media stories and headlines of 1992, when the LSM were vigorously promoting the election of Bill Clinton -- that's the point of the article.
The media lie, they lie from story selection to headline composition, from beginning to end, for political ends.
In 1992 the economy was beginning to recover (it was a famously weak recovery, though, as international capital began to offshore American prosperity), but the media refused to give Bush credit for it.
They are showing us a photonegative of that situation now, in which a far-worse economy than anything Bush 41 saw during the Gulf War downturn (precipitated by the Kuwait oil shock) is being happy-talked by everyone from the Fed (trying to forestall a bigger train wreck than the Great Depression) to the business press (in the tank for Bernanke) to the general MSM (in the tank for Obama).
My recollection is from job-hunting at the time; I’ve never bought the media line since my parents told me what is what as a child. Even today, Obama is in trouble because no matter what his media claims, the average person (read: voter) is in bad shape; they can fudge numbers, brag about a stock market (which is great if your income is solely generated by realizing gains on a huge equity portfolio - it really doesn’t help the average person in the near term), they can even claim Obama can walk on water. As long as our devalued dollars buy less at the pump or supermarket, and as long as the real number unemployed people (and their social circles) can’t be deceived into believing they’re actually working, Obama is done.
Prior economic indicators have to be looked at differently than in the past; today a company’s stock goes up when they lay off American workers and outsource work. Might be good for a sound-byte, but it is disastrous for American people “on the ground”.