Bipartisan governing boards with fixed statutory terms would be replaced by chairmen serving at the pleasure of the president. A new Office of Management and Budget, a Domestic Policy Council, their duties deliberately unspecified, were proposed, to which Nixon planned to appoint his smartest loyalists—seizing power from ornery cabinet departments, forging a weapon to exact political retribution against recalcitrant legislators via the federal power of the purse. Their personnel would be vetted not by senatorial advice and consent, but by his favorite “internal security” bulldog, the
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