Time is short for writing today but this obituary of Jerald terHorst , former White House Press Secretary, is worth a look. terHorst worked for President Ford and resigned when the latter pardoned Richard Nixon. Dean Acheson is quoted here saying that the group of public figures who have resigned over matters of conscience is "the most exclusive club" in America. Dean hadn't seen some of the things that we've seen since his time, but it's nevertheless true that such resignations are relatively rare.
I don't count the juniors (typically some State Department desk officer) who resign because they disagree with a policy; they're often mere egotists, and in their youth they have little to lose - they might quit quietly, or they might quit very publicly, but they would have quit in any case.
So, I refer to senior officials when I say "rare." It's also ironic that even when they do make news by bowing out, these men of conscience aren't always well remembered. Does anyone remember terHorst? No? Well, maybe it's because he had only been in his job for one month when this occurred, so he had not had time to become a household name. But even more prominent objectors can tend to fade into oblivion; I suspect that most people born in the 1970s or after won't recall the much more famous case from the same era, that of Attorney General Elliott Richardson, and the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre."
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