Unprecedented - The tension between a president and his secretary of state has never been this bad

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/10/the_tension_between_trump_and_tillerson_is_unprecedented.html

To discuss Tillerson’s bizarre tenure, and much else, I spoke by phone recently with Aaron David Miller, the Middle East program director at the Wilson Center who served in the State Department for 25 years and advised secretaries of state of both parties. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Tillerson’s mistakes at the State Department, why it’s so disturbing when a president and secretary of state don’t get along, and why Trump will never allow an effective person to run the department.

Isaac Chotiner: Have you ever seen an equivalent to the Trump-Tillerson relationship among presidents and their secretaries of state?

Aaron David Miller: No. I worked for half a dozen—Shultz to Powell—and for one of my books I interviewed every living secretary of state, including Alexander Haig. There is no precedent either for this kind of public tension, and no precedent for a secretary feeling compelled to respond to press reports the way Secretary Tillerson did the other day. And there is no precedent for open talk of resignation by a secretary of state, at least in the modern period. That also sets this whole episode apart.

Only three secretaries of state in the whole history of the republic have resigned over principle. And only two in the modern period served less than a year and a half. Ed Muskie, when Cyrus Vance resigned in March of 1980 in opposition to Carter’s military mission to rescue the hostages in Iran, served out the rest of his term. Haig served about a year and a half and then left because of tensions within the [Reagan] Cabinet.

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