As an OMB official from the beginning of Nixon’s first term, O’Neill, who would go on to serve as George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, had been impressed by the “Brandeis Briefs” demanded by Nixon from all his advisers—fact-based arguments the president sent back covered with incisive comments. By 1974, “I’m not sure Nixon even read my recommendations,” O’Neill recalled. “I guess he was huddled down in a bunker, wishing he were dead.”11
