Now that 4 people have resigned from ol’ GW’s cabinet… has anyone looked back to see what kind of housecleaning or reshuffling that has been done in the past during the second term of a president? Just curious.
The average time a cabinet member lasts is about 3 years according to a program on NPR last night. The political commentator making that statement said that Bush’s shuffling seems about par for the course thus far. It’s hard to concoct a meaningful statistic, since the number of cabinet posts has fluctuated over the years. Second term presidents usually reshuffle their cabinets significantly, and many adminstrations create or consolidate cabinet posts. You can look at cabinets by administration here:
http://u-s-history.com/pages/h1400.html
Clinton, for instance, replaced 7 of 13 cabinet members in 1997. Reagan also replaced 7 of 13 in 1985.
It looks like Nixon shuffled 8 at the start of his second term (1973). I distinctly remember jokes and political cartoons. The big one, of course, was appointing his National Security Adviser to be Secretary of State.
Yes, Nixon’s request for resignations from everybody and subsequent shuffling made news. That was 8 of 11 posts (Postmaster General was discontinued during his his first term, so he started with 12). Some of Nixon’s cabinet posts were held by 4 different appointees. Eisenhower appears to have only swapped 2 of 10 cabinet members following his reelection in 1956, but he changed a lot of them mid-term. Only 2 members of his cabinet served for his entire 8 year tenure.
I was wondering; what if the cabinet members refused to send in resignation letters and told the requestor, “If George wants me out of here, let him bloody well tell me himself!”. I suppose that President Bush would indeed can this person’s behind. Is this just a face saving maneuver for all parties? The President can seem gracious as he accepts or refuses resignations, the member leaves on terms that will enable him/her to seek employment elsewhere, and everything runs smoothly. Is this about right?
Maybe Bush will do another thing Nixon did duing his second term! 
Yes, the President can fire them. Without Congressional approval. Hiring does require approval from Congress.
This was decided just after the Civil War, when President Andrew Johnson wanted to fire some of the Cabinet members left to him by Lincoln. Congress passed the Tenure in Office act, which said that offices appointed with Congressional approval also required Congressional Approval to dis-appoint. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional.
It wasn’t until the Wilson administration that the Supreme Court finally got around to saying that the President had pretty much full authority to fire any political appointee.
It’s been quite a while since any Cabinet member has been as obstinate as the ones Andrew Johnson had to deal with.
But Andrew Johnson wasn’t exactly an easy guy to get along with and that Civil War seemed to have stirred up some bad blood.
John Tyler had his entire Cabinet, except for the Secretary of State Daniel Webster, resign on him, in protest of his policies. Webster eventually resigned, but held off because he was in some crucial negotiations with the British over the Maine-New Brunswick border.