The misery index is an economic indicator, created by economist Arthur Okun, and found by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It is assumed that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of inflation create economic and social costs for a country.A graph of changes in misery during presidential terms, via Cato:
[..] During the Presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter made frequent references to the Misery Index, which by the summer of 1976 was at 13.57%. Carter stated that no man responsible for giving a country a misery index that high had a right to even ask to be President. Carter won the 1976 election. However, by 1980, when President Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the Misery Index had reached an all-time high of 21.98%. Carter lost the election to Reagan.
This seems to jive with common wisdom about recent presidents: Reagan and Clinton were good, Carter was terrible, and the Bushies were mostly neutral.
Naturally, any metric that values reductions in inflation is going to make Reagonomics look good. Presently we're working our way out of a deflationary recession, so the usual rules don't apply; some more inflation would actually be good right now (and help bring up employment to boot).
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