Short timers club

Katie Zacharia’s term as White House Press Secretary lasted less than a week. Sources close to the situation report that her tenure was shorter than her going-away party but longer than the time she spent practicing law.

In light of this development, MMW News Services invites readers to look back at some other White House appointees who quickly left their jobs.

·       H.L. Hemmingford was Secretary of War under President Chester A Arthur for eight days in the fall of 1883. Hemmingford, a farmer from southwest Virginia, was not a military man, and his nomination shocked many. During his Congressional hearing, he was famously questioned about his lack of military experience. “Sir, I have fought many a war on aphids and weevils,” he said. But days into the job, he had a crisis of conscience. According to a biography of Arthur, Hemmingford, rushed to the Oval Office and said to Arthur, “Mr. President, I have reviewed the papers you asked me to and this whole business of war seems quite dangerous. Are you suggesting our army actually…kill people?” Ironically, Hemmingford returned to his acreage near Roanoke to discover that, in his absence, weevils had ransacked his peanut fields.

·       Joyce Wilson served as Secretary of Education for six days under President Dwight Eisenhower. Wilson was asked by a New York Times reporter how her job was going and she said, “I am getting along well with all my staff, especially Lucy, my assistant. On my first day, Lucy forgot her lunch, so I cut my sandwich in half and shared it with her.” Once that news hit the press, Sen. Joe McCarthey (R-Wisc) labelled her a communist, and Wilson was promptly fired.

·       The ill-fated term of Secretary of Agriculture Hubbard Talmage was cut short after a scandal-plagued week. President Woodrow Wilson denied claims that he told his staff, “Ag secretary? Who cares, just get some guy from Iowa,” but suspicions were confirmed that Wilson didn’t take the position seriously after it was discovered that Talmage had only ever grown coca in a secret basement under his house in Oelwein. On his second day in office, “Ol’ Hubby Snort” as his staffers called him, had to be dragged back inside after pawing the ground in the rose garden while shouting “Them worms is flyin’!” He survived that incident, but could not continue after running naked down the National Mall while singing “I’m a Little Teapot.” “I deeply regret that my actions have brought dishonor onto my office and the president,” he said during his resignation. “And I promise to enter a sanitarium to treat my maladies, right after I blow this rail.”

·       But the shortest was that of the Bureau of Moon Marooning established for one afternoon by President Richard Nixon. After the moon landing of 1969, Nixon created the office under the name Moon Exploration, but it secretly was designed to lure in political opponents with a free trip to the lunar surface with the intention of stranding them there. G Gordon Liddy, who came up with the scheme, headed the effort for about three hours before a press leak forced Nixon to reverse course. “That bushy-lipped (expletive deleted) really (expletive deleted) me on this one, Henry,” Nixon said to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. “This is why this morning I installed a recording system that will document every (expletive deleted) conversation that goes on around here so I can show those pieces of (expletive deleted) over at the Post know this wasn’t my (expletive deleted) idea.”