In "How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes", Burton A. Abrams writes:
In Nixon’s 1962 (p. 309-310) book, Six Crises,
he recounts that Arthur Burns called on him in March 1960 to warn him
that the economy was likely to dip before the November election. Nixon
writes that Burns “urged strongly that everything possible be done to
avert this development. He urgently recommended that two steps be taken
immediately: by loosening up on credit and, where justifiable, by
increasing spending for national security.”
The idea was to improve the economy enough that Vice President Nixon
would win the election and take his turn as President when Eisenhower's
second term was up. But no steps were taken, and Nixon ultimately lost
to John F. Kennedy. Abrams writes:
But when then-Vice President Nixon took this
recommendation to the Eisenhower Cabinet, “there was strong sentiment
against using the spending and credit powers of the Federal Government
to affect the economy, unless and until conditions clearly indicated a
major recession in prospect.”
This excerpt ends as they all should, with economic policy actions
reserved for economic rather than political purposes. But then, this one
wasn't Nixon's decision.
From the National Review article "(More) Politics At The Fed?", dated April 28, 2004, which Wikipedia's "Arthur F. Burns" article attributes (in footnote 13) to Bruce Bartlett:
Richard
Nixon was acutely aware that Fed tightening in late 1959 brought on a
recession that began in April 1960. As the nominee of the incumbent
party, Nixon took the blame for slow growth. In his book Six Crises,
he complained bitterly that the Fed had, in effect, thrown the election
to John F. Kennedy, whose most potent campaign pledge was that he would
get the economy moving again.
From the "Federal Reserve Chairman" section of Wikipedia's article on Arthur Burns:
Nixon later blamed his defeat in 1960 in part on Fed policy and the resulting tight credit conditions and slow growth.
The purpose of economic policy, in Nixon's view, was not to promote the general welfare, but to make things better for Nixon.
From Politico, 10 October 2020: "The Time Nixon’s Cronies Tried to Overturn a Presidential Election"
[Nixon's]
top aides and the Republican Party, almost certainly with Nixon’s
backing, waged a campaign to cast doubt on the outcome of the election,
launching challenges to Kennedy’s victories in 11 states."
It didn't work, that time.
From "Nixonomics: How the Game Plan Went Wrong" by Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, in Atlantic Monthly, July 1971:
During that difficult decade after his defeat in 1960,
aides and close friends had heard Nixon say privately time after time
that had President Eisenhower only taken his and Arthur Burns's advice
early in 1960 and moved rapidly toward stimulating the economy, he --
not Jack Kennedy -- would have been elected President. The implication,
not quite stated flatly, was that Richard Nixon, if he had the power,
would never again go into a presidential election with the economy in a
state of deflation.
From The Chennault Affair at The LBJ Presidential Library
Fifty years ago this year, on Oct. 31, 1968, President
Lyndon B. Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam in
hopes of encouraging peace talks to end the Vietnam War. At the time,
Johnson knew a secret. Some in the Nixon campaign were secretly
communicating with the South Vietnamese Government in an effort to delay
the opening of the peace talks. They offered the prospect of a better
deal for South Vietnam if Nixon became president...
When he learned of the back-channel communications, President Johnson called the effort "treason."
From “This Is Treason” at The LBJ Telephone Tapes:
Three days before the 1968 presidential election, President
Johnson contacted Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen [R–Illinois]
to inform him that the White House had received hard evidence from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation that the campaign of Republican
presidential candidate Richard M. “Dick” Nixon was interfering with
Johnson’s efforts to start peace talks to end the Vietnam War. In this
call, Johnson referred to contacts between Nixon’s campaign and South
Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu that urged Thiệu to thwart any
such negotiations.
From the National Review:
When Nixon became president in 1968, he vowed that he
would not let the Fed do it to him again. At his earliest opportunity,
he appointed a trusted aide, Arthur Burns, to the chairmanship of the
Federal Reserve. His job was to make sure that money and credit stayed
easy through the 1972 election.
As Wikipedia has it:
After finally winning the presidential election of 1968,
Nixon named Burns to the Fed Chair in 1970 with instructions to ensure
easy access to credit when Nixon was running for reelection in 1972.
Later,
when Burns resisted, negative press about him was planted in newspapers
and, under the threat of legislation to dilute the Fed's influence,
Burns and other Governors succumbed.
Abrams writes:
Evidence
from the Nixon tapes, recently made available to researchers, clearly
reveals that President Nixon pressured Burns, both directly and
indirectly through Office of Management and Budget Director George
Shultz, to engage in expansionary monetary policies prior to the 1972
election.
And then there was the election interference called "Watergate", with
Nixon's people breaking into Democratic headquarters and getting caught
in the act. I refer to the "Smoking Gun" tape section of Wikipedia's Nixon White House Tapes article:
Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of Thursday, August 8, 1974, effective as of noon the next day.
Finally, from "Trump and Nixon were pen pals in the ‘80s. Here are their letters" at Politico:
The last letter in the Trump-Nixon series is dated Jan. 26,
1993. Trump writes to Nixon not long after his 80th birthday to thank
him for a
birthday photo and says, “You are a great man, and I have had and always
will have the utmost respect and admiration for you. I am proud to know
you.”
Birds of a feather.
