Haig's Coup
Haig's Coup

Author: Ray Locker

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-05-01

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1640120351

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When General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier. Haldeman and Ehrlichman had enforced the president’s will and protected him from his rivals and his worst instincts for four years. Without them, Nixon stood alone, backed by a staff that lacked gravitas and confidence as the Watergate scandal snowballed. Nixon needed a savior, someone who would lift his fortunes while keeping his White House from blowing apart. He hoped that savior would be his deputy national security adviser, Alexander Haig, whom he appointed chief of staff. But Haig’s goal was not to keep Nixon in office—it was to remove him. In Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently declassified documents to tell the true story of how Haig orchestrated Nixon’s demise, resignation, and subsequent pardon. A story of intrigues, cover-ups, and treachery, this incisive history shows how Haig engineered the “soft coup” that ended our long national nightmare and brought Watergate to an end.

AF Press Clips
AF Press Clips

Author: United States Department of State. Bureau of African Affairs

Publisher:

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 636

ISBN-13:

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Innocent Until Nominated
Innocent Until Nominated

Author: G. Calvin MacKenzie

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-08-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780815716662

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According to outspoken presidential scholar Cal Mackenzie, the presidential appointments process is a national disgrace. It encourages bullies and emboldens demagogues, silences the voices of responsibility, and nourishes the lowest forms of partisan combat. It uses innocent citizens as pawns in the petty games of politicians and stains the reputations of good people. It routinely violates fundamental democratic principles, undermines the quality and consistency of public management, and breaches simple decency. In short, at a time when the quality of political leadership in government matters more than ever, the procedures for ensuring that quality are less reliable than ever. How did we get into this distressing condition? What is wrong with the current appointments process? And, most important, what can we do to fix it? Innocent Until Nominated brings together ten of the country¡¯s leading scholars of government and politics to explore recent changes in the presidential appointments process and their effects on the ability of contemporary presidents to recruit and retain talented leaders. Each chapter provides a special focus on a range of topics including presidential transitions, the obstacle course of Senate confirmation, the morass of forms and questionnaires, and the exasperating, exhausting, and humiliating experiences of recent appointees. For scholars, students, and potential presidential recruits, the book offers a candid and revealing look at the failures of the appointments process... and how it has become a serious impediment to effective leadership of the executive branch. Contributors include Sarah A. Binder (Brookings Institution and George Washington University), E. J. Dionne Jr. (Brookings Institution and Washington Post), George C. Edwards III (Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University), Stephen Hess (Brookings Institution), Judith M. Labiner (Brookings Institution), Paul C. Light (Brookings Institution