Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes

Though Richard Nixon came to office preoccupied with foreign policy, he soon had to grapple with an economy that threatened him with political defeat. Following the advice of Milton Friedman, the president placed his initial hopes for good times in the economics of caution. But when the economy dipped into recession and cost the Republicans victory in the congressional election of 1970, Nixon turned for rescue not to his economists but to a politician, the former Democratic governor of Texas, John Connally, who became secretary of the treasury midway through the first term. Historian Allen J. Matusow now presents the first comprehensive history of Nixon's political economy. He depicts a president who disliked the subject but was forced to pay attention or lose his dream of effecting a historic realignment of the political parties in America. The study derives its authority from extensive archival research in Nixon's presidential papers, including notes by Haldeman and Ehrlichman of crucial conversations in the Oval Office. Matusow shows the poverty of contemporary economic theory, Nixon's willingness to sacrifice the world economy for his domestic political purposes, and his desperate attempts to find something, anything, that might work. Lurching from one set of policies to another, Matusow argues, Nixon achieved only illusory successes that ultimately brought on a decade of economic disaster.