Word: staffs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Correspondents Eileen Shields and Douglas Brew helped to piece the story together with interviews of some of the incoming and outgoing members of the Carter Cabinet. Ogden spoke with Hamilton Jordan, the new White House Chief of Staff, and other top aides. The whole experience reminded him oddly of the Kremlin shake-ups he had reported from the Soviet Union. Observed Ogden: "In Moscow, when we would analyze changes in the Politburo membership, it invariably appeared that dissidents had been dropped and team players installed. That's exactly how it looked in Washington last week...
...this image from English Essayist Charles Lamb, an aghast White House official summed up the most extraordinary week in the White House since Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. In four days, Jimmy Carter dismantled the leadership of his Government by demanding the resignations of his top 34 Cabinet and staff aides. And then?the chairs of power theoretically empty?he set about firing those he deemed ineffective, disloyal, political liabilities, annoyances to his closest associates, or all of the above...
...will in the very near future." Adams showed up at the White House Friday morning but did not wait to be fired. Said the plain-spoken Adams afterward: "I made clear my position. I quit... A Cabinet officer must work directly for the President?not for the White House staff." Butchman and Bracy also resigned...
...week's end Carter had not yet accepted any resignations from his White House staff, but he had in one single stroke, a promotion, drastically restructured it. New powers and the title Chief of Staff went to his top aide, 34-year-old Hamilton Jordan. The change eliminated the last vestiges of Carter's experiment with "Cabinet government" and a staff that he used to compare to the "spokes of the wheel," with himself at the hub. His original intention had been to give associates easy access to the Oval Office. Soon after the election, Press Secretary Jody Powell announced...
...bitter jest, Richard Conlon, staff director of the moderate-liberal House Democratic Study Group, sent out forms asking for an evaluation of the President's staff. Sample questions: How confident are you of the White House staffs judgment? How mature is the White House staff? Within a day, 160 forms were returned, filled out by House members and aides. According to Conlon, more than two-thirds of the returns listed Jordan as the least effective of Carter's aides. Said Conlon: "We did it as a spoof. The idea of a questionnaire is sophomoric...