The recession happened just before Bush's election (officially starting in March 2000). The .com bust had a huge impact on the tech sector, but the Enron & Worldcom scandals hit the rest of the economy hard.

It was a modest recession, but it wiped out a huge amount of wealth held by "main street" investors. It was bad enough that Bush, a very, very pro-business president, signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is widely criticized as an onerous and needless regulation by conservatives.