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Doan Fired for Being A "Distraction"
Former GSA chief Lurita Doan tells her story about how she got the axe:
Q: Tell us about the logistics of how this all happened. It's been pretty much universally reported that you were asked to resign by the White House. If you could tell us if that is indeed what happened, and then if you could tell us how it happened.Doan: Well Francis, you know, it's a real thrill to go to the White House. You get to walk up that curved drive to the West Wing, and.... and I have a deep, and a really lasting respect for President Bush who... who I believe is a truly great man, but... but during my 22 months as Administrator of GSA, I had never met with any senior White House person - not once. So here I am, I'm sitting down for the first time with (White House Chief of Staff) Josh Bolton and (White House Counsel) Fred Fielding and less than thirty seconds into the meeting I was told that the White House is requesting my resignation. It was humbling, and frankly, it was bizarre. So naturally, I immediately stated "I serve at the pleasure of the President" and I immediately gave my resignation, but... but it was absolutely surreal.
Q: Was there any discussion of why this was happening?
Doan: Of course I naturally asked why do they want my resignation.... [A]nd I was surprised to be told that from the White House point of view I was considered - and this is a direct quote - a "distraction".
As Government Executive reported last week, Doan doesn't think that her firing had anything to do with the alleged Hatch Act violations -- but rather with her ongoing feud with the GSA's inspector general.
Comments (20)
There sure have been a lot of resignations/distractions these days. I thought everyone was committed to staying until the "bitter" end.
Alice Fisher, DOJ
Alphonso Jackson, HUD
And don't overlook this Doan item, a total CYA:
"I had never met with any senior White House person - not once."
Depends on your definition of "senior" Lurita.
May 5, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
When you hire a pea-brain, this is probably the limit of what she'll ever understand about the situation. Maybe she really did forget all that stuff she claimed to forget in the hearings. If so, who actually was doing her job all this time? It is unlikely she was ever capable of doing all the organizing and coordinating (not to mention basic math) a GSA chief must do.
She reminds me of high-school Cordelia in Buffy: It's all about me!
May 5, 2008 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
To fall below Bush standards, you must be special; Doan is extraordinarily special.
May 5, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
And "Gonezales" wasn't a distraction, and he was in the news for months and months before he was gone? I hope she still feels bushie is a great man.
May 5, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
One question IQ test: Is George W. Bush a great man? The scoring is binary.
May 5, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, Hoppy, how's Sacramento these days?
Long time since the first Dean Meetup...
I always used to say, the best IQ qualifier was "do you thnk All Star Wrestling is real?"
But now we have a whole new test, yours is even mpore accurate.
I think there's about a 25% factor, of people who will follow Bush right through the gates of hell.
And so many of them are self-appointed Christians.
May 5, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think "distraction" was just a code word for "attraction"...
As in "side-show"...
They know that they can't have that kind of a lightning rod attracting too much voltage between now and November.
May 5, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
she's a fool, a bubbly one at that.
she's being dissed but wants to make it a memorable event to walk up to the WH to get fired or something. If she was blond, it would be understandable.
dork.
May 5, 2008 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It was humbling, and frankly, it was bizarre."
After all the handjobs she had been giving to George's pet causes . . . If she is smart she'll get on the next plane to Dubai and lose her passport when she gets there and at all costs avoid visiting her mother in Florida.
May 5, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is exactly the sort of sarcastic, mean comment that makes the comment sections of liberal blogs leave me feeling slimy and depressed.
Whatever objections you might have to Doan, and I'm sure there are plenty of valid ones, your post has nothing to say about them. Rather, you seem bent on being the most cynical, profane, and hateful commenter on Doan.
Good luck with that, Chief.
May 5, 2008 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sarcasm and mean-spiritedness are on ample display on any number of rightwing propaganda outlets.
If you like, we can trace some of this incivility directly to the floor of the Senate when your vice president made a vulgar remark to a Senator.
People who live in glass houses...
I won;t even visit the pages of the right anymore, so filled with hate and acrimony that I don't recognize my country anymore. Thanks in large part to the Atwater/Rove/Cheney cabal to ensure a one-party nation. Well, we've seen what your one-party has done.
May 6, 2008 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
READ what she says! "I have always believed there is a downside to excessive oversight."
She says that she worked against oversight and regulations, and she reduced the standards for audits, in order to give contracts to small businesses and port expanders who would not otherwise have gotten those contracts.
And because of her efforts, the employees know that they are syphoning contracts to their party and thus now "believe in themselves."
Third, she says that the GSA had an organized effort to influence the media - like some retired military leaders disseminating Pentagon talking points. "I know we have had a lot of GSA people [on the radio] talking about those various successes..."
The fact that she quotes Thomas Jefferson just proves she is stupid with koolaid. That's like a cherry on top. But the fact remains that she is openly saying that she affected port contracts. These contracts must be looked at again by Congress.
May 5, 2008 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Her being fired also has nothing to do with the fact that SHE IS STUPID!
May 5, 2008 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
no mention of her desire to "spend time with her family"
WTF ???
May 5, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
She was fired for the only reason anyone is fired by Bush - to make sure the inevitable investigation does not lead to Bush before February 2009.
How many days will pass before we are told that Doan won't testify before some Committee because she is no longer at GSA?
May 5, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Federal News Radio? Is that the only media outlet that even bothered to call up poor ol Lurita?
Question, what's so bizarre and surreal about getting fired? She's living in a bubble!
May 5, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Still waiting for the other shoe to drop, in the form of an indictment, or at least a story of a deal to escape prosecution in exchange for resignation. They wouldn't have asked her to leave without a reason.
May 5, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those are some finely honed self-delusion skills she's got going there.
Soon to be in her mailbox:
"Thank you for your application to our company, Ms Doan. We wish you luck in all your future endeavors."
May 5, 2008 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
She can't have been fired for stupidity because, after watching her testimony on C-Span, I'm pretty sure her stupidity must have been obvious when they hired her. I'd even venture to say she was hired for two reasons: Stupidity and Malleability.
May 5, 2008 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't care why she was fired. There are ample reasons; any one of them will do.
But the GSA is an independent federal agency with 12,000 employees, for goodness sakes, and she'd never met with a senior White House staffer in her two years running the place? Now that's genuinely scandalous.
May 5, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink