These Washington insiders have likely never applied for Unemployment in their lives.
I don’t see how a single bad order is not letting you manage. There are still other things the person could conceivably do. It seems weird to me to give up your power intentionally instead of continuing to use it as long as you can.
Plus, well, it would seem to be a form of bluff calling. You say I have to do this? I’m not going to. What are you going to do, fire me? It seems like a surefire way to cede power.
To be honest, it seems a lot like the loyalty stuff that I don’t agree with. Like you have some loyalty to your boss to quit if you can’t obey them. It feels entirely cultural, rather than anything innate.
Even the message issue mentioned by others seems cultural. Why do people assume the person was “trying to get away with something” rather than “standing up for his principles and refusing to back down”?
You’re confusing a couple different events here. During the transition, Preet Bharara met with Trump who asked him to remain as US Attorney for the SDNY, to which he agreed. 45 other US Attorneys (about half of them in all) also agreed to stay on. The other half resigned as is customary during a presidential transition.
In March, AG Sessions then ordered resignation letters from the remaining US Attorneys. Bharara was confused by this since Trump himself had asked him to remain. He apparently sought clarification from DOJ and the White House but didn’t get any, so he refused to resign. He was then fired the next day.
Actually Trump declined a handful of the second batch of resignations, including Dana Boente (who was working as Acting Deputy AG at the time) and Deirdre Daly (District of Connecticut.)