I can't get enough Nixon-as-Bad-Guy stories, but...

This is Milton Friedman's Nixon-as-Bad-Guy story:

You know why price and wage controls are imposed? They are imposed whenever a Government wants to inflate. The imposition of price and wage controls is a sure sign that the Government wants to inflate. After all, Governments are not foolish. The people who do these things aren’t stupid. They know the record of history. They know as well as you and I do that wage and price controls don’t have anything to do with inflation, then why do they impose them? Because they want to inflate and this is a way in which on the one hand they can inflate and on the other can give the public the impression that they are doing something about inflation. In addition, they want to postpone the evil consequences of inflation. They want to have as much of their inflation as possible come out initially in the form of increased output. After all, politicians are necessarily short sighted. As elections come near, they try to postpone the problem. Look at the record in recent years. In the United States in 1971, Mr. Nixon imposed price and wage controls at a time when our rate of inflation was running at the horrendous level of 4½% a year. That temporarily suppressed inflation but the final result of those wage and price controls was an inflation at the rate of 12% a year. It was perfectly clear that the reason Mr. Nixon imposed price and wage controls at that time is that he wanted to take expansionary fiscal and monetary measures that would create a favourable economic climate for the 1972 elections.

Source: "Can Inflation Be Cured" from Milton Friedman in Australia, 1975.

When I first read the Milton Friedman paper linked above, for me the Nixon paragraph was a prize find. This time when I read it (while writing this post) I was surprised to see that Friedman's version is only another inflation story, a wage-and-price-controls-are-useless story. In everything else I have read on the Nixon re-election, the scandal was that Nixon put his buddy Burns in charge at the Fed and Burns delayed raising interest rates long enough "to make sure the economy was robust going into the election" as the National Review article (see below) puts it. 

And Nixon's wage and price controls were only needed until the election was over. Nixon wasn't saving the economy. He was saving his job.

Yes, Friedman adds depth to the story, but he leaves out the best parts. And he doesn't bring in the co-conspirator Burns, at all. 

Manipulation of Federal Reserve policy decisions is a key piece of the story. But Friedman, as usual, is always and everywhere focused on inflation to the point where it almost ruins a great Nixon story!

Wikipedia's "Arthur F. Burns" article -- Burns was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978 -- Wikipedia links to the 2004 National Review article "(More) Politics at the Fed?" by Bruce Bartlett. That's the one you want to read. The link to that article is broken. National Review now has it at this address and attributed to RIDHancock instead of to Bartlett. And yet, just below the NR article we still find this:

– Bruce Bartlett is senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Bartlett writes: "Nixon wanted to keep monetary policy loose in order to make sure the economy was robust going into the election."

Nixon wanted a robust economy because he was the incumbent running for re-election. If he wasn't the incumbent he'd have wanted the economy going from bad to worse. In the context of the Biden years, if I was running against Biden and I was a dirtbag like Nixon, I would have talked the Fed into delaying the increase of interest rates for a year in order to get inflation raging, and I'd have been calling it "the Biden inflation" every time I opened my mouth.

I'd have done everything in my power to make Biden's economy look bad and worse and worst. But that's just me.