Word: iacocca
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...second time in his highly visible career, Iacocca had been canned. The previous occasion was when Henry Ford II tossed him out of the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. in 1978 with no more explanation than "Sometimes you just don't like somebody." At his Detroit press conference last week, Iacocca first quipped, "I've got to stop getting fired like this." The Chrysler boss then insisted flatly that there had been no conflict between his two Statue of Liberty jobs. He said that he had first taken the commission post in 1982 at the urging of then Secretary...
...Iacocca then raised a pertinent question about his firing: "Is there more here than meets the eye?" He suggested one possibility: his long-running feud with the National Park Service, which is under Hodel's Interior Department, over how to restore the 27-acre Ellis Island. "I will oppose any effort to commercialize this restoration project," he declared. "And that includes any plans to build a luxury hotel and conference center on the island." He charged that the Park Service wanted to finance this center "through the sale of tax shelters for the rich." While Hodel soft-pedaled the conference...
...Iacocca, on the other hand, has promoted what he calls an "ethnic Williamsburg" concept in the restoration. His toughness softens as he describes his vision of having visitors "see exactly what your mother or father or grandparents saw. You would walk into the Great Hall and meditate and pray, because it is like a church--it is just beautiful." There would be exhibits explaining why Ellis had become "an island of tears," and "you could punch a computer and find out what boats your parents came on." Park Service officials in turn dismissed this as "an ethnic Disneyland...
...philosophic disagreements over how to use the island apparently run deep, and they have been exacerbated by the flamboyant way Iacocca has gone % about raising the millions of dollars, tapping schoolchildren and major corporations alike. In personalizing the project, he ran roughshod over the Park Service and its green-uniformed rangers, according to some critics, reducing them to errand boys for the foundation and the commission. Said Park Service Spokesman George Berklacy after Iacocca was fired: "The rangers were bleeding green with happiness this morning. The Secretary's action was a tremendous morale boost...
Clearly, Hodel had become a hero within his own bureaucracy. But he had also inadvertently focused new attention on Iacocca as a potential presidential candidate. Although Iacocca votes independently, Democrats would love to claim him as their own. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed him running only slightly behind New York Governor Mario Cuomo among Democrats for President, while both trailed Colorado Senator Gary Hart. But Iacocca insisted again last week that he has no presidential ambitions and that his resolve had been "put in concrete" by the week's events. He complained that politics "repulses...