Page 103 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

hotly contested 2004 Washington governor’s race apparently triggered his
downfall. In one of the closest elections in American history, the votes had
to be counted three times before the Democratic candidate finally was
named the winner by a margin of only 129 votes. McKay’s fellow Repub-
licans were unhappy that he did not intervene even after a Superior Court
judge ruled that there was no evidence Democrats had sabotaged the
electoral process. “I was making decisions—and I knew it at the time—
that were not going to make me popular with certain politically active
Republicans,” McKay disclosed.
On December 7, 2006, McKay arrived at work and found a message
to call a Department of Justice official—the same one who delivered the
bad news to David Iglesias that day. McKay was told that “the adminis-
tration wanted a change” and that he should “move on” by the end of
January. As soon as McKay hung up the phone, images of his White House
Fellows principal immediately filled his mind. McKay had been working
at the FBI when President Bill Clinton fired Sessions, and the incident was
burned permanently in his memory.
“Sessions was fired rather dramatically by President Clinton after mis-
handling an issue involving a security fence at his house and allegedly mis-
using government airplanes and other perks for his wife’s and his own
personal use. After he was fired by the president, Sessions continued to go
about his business as if nothing had happened. The president had to call
him back within an hour and fire him a second time,” McKay explained.
“How ironic it is that one of the lessons I learned from working with
Sessions was how to get fired with dignity. I hung up the phone from that
conversation in which I got fired and didn’t want there to be any doubt
that I got the message, so I immediately announced my ‘resignation’ so as
to make clear my intention to comply with the president’s order. I didn’t
want them to have to say, ‘When are you leaving?’ or ‘Get out now.’ I felt
they were capable of that. I thought at the time it was my duty to leave
and not do anything to embarrass the White House or the Department of
Justice. I set out to swallow my pride and go. And I did.”
By February 2007, six of the attorneys fired on December 7, 2006,
began talking among themselves about what had happened to them, first
by e-mail and then on conference calls. “We started connecting with each
other, and we started to see that there was a serious problem,” McKay said.
“It was a very interesting thing when the six of us came together and

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