Those inclined to view President Trump’s needling of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell as an unprecedented breach of decorum might wish to brush up on their monetary history. The truth is, tormenting the Fed chairman — whether through verbal assault, political manipulation or, on at least one remarkable occasion, an actual shove — has long been part of the American political tradition. Over the past 60 years, this peculiar sport has produced no shortage of high drama and, more worryingly, some truly calamitous inflation.
The pressures now bearing down on Jerome Powell have an air of déjà vu about them — eerily so. If whispers from the Hill Country are to be believed, the last time a Fed chairman found himself in similar crosshairs, it ended with a shove against the stone wall of a Texas ranch house, courtesy of President Lyndon Johnson himself. That chairman was William McChesney Martin. Not long after, another president, Richard Nixon, took a more insidious, i
