The Administration: Minister Without Portfolio

Arthur Frank Burns was chairman of Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers when he first met Richard Nixon in 1953. Burns made no secret of his admiration for the then Vice President. In March of 1960, after he had returned to his old professorial post at Columbia University, Burns went down to Washington to alert Nixon to his own reading of the economy—based on his knowledge as a top expert on the business cycle. His warning: a recession was under way, and would reach its nadir in October, just before the presidential elections....