President Donald Trump's tantrum over the weak jobs numbers and termination of the Bureau of Labor Statistics director is in many ways a repeat of history, as former President Richard Nixon similarly became paranoid that federal data was being cooked to sabotage him. But there's a big difference in how far each president was willing to go, at least in public, to twist the civil service to their will, historian Tim Naftali wrote for The Atlantic.
Trump's move against BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer — which he justified by baselessly claiming that Democratic operatives fraudulently manufactured the numbers to make him look bad — has raised massive alarms among experts who fear it could undermine the government's entire ability to produce reliable economic data used for all manner of policymaking.
Nixon was in a similar state of mind more than 50 years ago, wrote Naftali.
"In July of 1971, the president was infuriated that an unnamed official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics had seemed to downplay the administration’s progress on reducing unemployment while briefing reporters," he wrote. "His suspicions fell on Harold Goldstein, the longtime civil servant and BLS official in charge of the jobs numbers, who had attracted his ire for other comments earlier in the year. Nixon ordered his political counselor, Charles Colson, to investigate. If it had been Goldstein, he said, 'he’s got to be fired.'"
Nixon went on to privately rage to his staff that the government was "full of Jews" who were "disloyal" to America.
And yet, wrote Naftali, Nixon had a few lines that he wasn't willing to cross, that Trump is.
"Unlike Trump, who lashed out publicly against McEntarfer, Nixon was afraid to own his bad behavior," wrote Naftali. "He did not force out his BLS commissioner in 1971, instead waiting for the chance to accept his resignation two years later. Not wanting his hands to be dirty — as defined by the presidential norms of his era — Nixon constrained himself to abuse power only indirectly. He had no desire to risk public disapproval by firing bureaucrats for specious and explosive reasons."
Nixon's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, was instrumental in restraining him from going that far. But today, "Neither Trump’s Cabinet members nor his White House staff are willing to serve as a check on presidential bad behavior," wrote Naftali. "And so last week, Trump did what not even Nixon had dared, becoming the first president ever to fire his BLS commissioner."