Tevi Troy reminds us in a Washingtonian column that President Trump is not the first American chief executive to generate massive news by dismissing a top staffer.
[W]hile Trump might be the first reality star to become President, he’s hardly the first President to do high-profile firing. We combed through the history of executive dismissals to see who really stood out.
1. Best Known, Worst Bungled
Amid the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon asked attorney general Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who months earlier had subpoenaed Nixon’s Oval Office recordings. Both lawyers opted to resign instead. In the wake of what was dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre, the President’s approval rating dropped to 27 percent. Four decades on, the presidential oustings are still the most infamous.
2. Biggest Turnaround
On April 11, 1951, Harry S. Truman replaced popular general Douglas MacArthur with General Matthew Ridgway over what Truman called MacArthur’s “rank insubordination” during the Korean War. Enjoying a hero’s welcome back home, MacArthur was invited to speak to a joint session of Congress. “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” he told the lawmakers, before promptly fading away. Ridgway, on the other hand, helped turn the failing war effort into a stalemate.
3. Most Victims
In 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,400 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 48 hours after offering them an ultimatum: end their illegal strike or forfeit their jobs. The workers, seeking better pay and working conditions, were banned from federal employment. Reagan’s Secretary of State George P. Shultz called the tough domestic play his boss’s most important foreign-policy decision: The Soviets were watching.
4. Most Memorable Nickname
Gerald Ford pushed VP Nelson Rockefeller off the ’76 reelection ticket, fired CIA director William Colby and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, and took away Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council portfolio, in what became known as the Halloween Massacre.