Firing Is Hard to Do

Only Ronald Reagan knows whether he would really like Don Regan to leave the White House. But even if the President would, he is, as a former assistant notes, "incapable of firing anyone." At least face to face. Though Reagan had little trouble sacking 11,500 air-traffic controllers in 1981, he is known to have directly dismissed only a few top aides in his entire political career. One was John Sears, his 1980 campaign manager. Reagan summoned Sears and two other advisers to a hotel room in New Hampshire and said, "Fellas, this isn't going to work."

Reagan eased Secretary of State Alexander Haig out of office. In 1982, after the emotional Haig offered once too often to resign, the President handed him a note that began, "It is with the most profound regret that I accept your letter of resignation." Observed the astonished Haig in his memoir, Caveat: "The President was accepting a letter of resignation that I had not submitted."

Reagan is far from alone among Presidents in his reluctance to do what corporate managers are expected to do almost routinely. Most Presidents have abhorred direct dismissals of high officials, preferring to arrange face- saving resignations when finally convinced that a once valued aide must leave. When Sherman Adams, Dwight Eisenhower's steely chief of staff, admitted in 1958 that he had accepted a vicuna coat and some blankets from Textile Manufacturer Bernard Goldfine, even Ike, who had vowed that his Administration would be "clean as a hound's tooth," took no action until Republican fat cats warned that party fund raising might suffer unless Adams left. Eisenhower let aides pass that worry along to Adams, who then stepped down. As Adams wrote in his memoirs: "Any presidential appointee whose presence in the Administration becomes an embarrassment to the President for any reason whatsoever has no choice but to submit his resignation."

Only when his own skin was being scorched by Watergate did Richard Nixon sacrifice Aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. He found the courage to tell each of them face to face in tearful meetings at Camp David that they must resign. Then he praised them publicly as "two of the finest public servants" he had ever known. Jimmy Carter defended Bert Lance as innocent of shady banking practices and brushed off advice that he ask his longtime friend to leave his post as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. "I could not bring myself to do it," Carter later explained. When Lance finally resigned, Carter endured a scolding from Lance's wife LaBelle for letting him go.

In 1951, fed up with what he viewed as General Douglas MacArthur's insubordination as commander of United Nations forces in Korea, Harry Truman told an aide, "The son of a bitch isn't going to resign on me! I want him fired!" Yet Truman did not complete the deed in person; instead he relayed his orders, signed by Army General Omar Bradley, to MacArthur in Tokyo. As it turned out, MacArthur learned indirectly from radio reports that he was out before Truman's message ever reached him.