President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur with MacArthur than with Bradley or Marshall. Truman's approval rating fell to 23 percent in mid-1951, which was lower than Richard Nixon's low of 25 percent during the Watergate Scandal in 1974, and Lyndon Johnson's of 28 percent at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. , it remains the lowest Gallup Poll approval rating recorded by any serving president. The increasingly unpopular war in Korea dragged on, and the Truman administration was beset with a series of corruption scandals. He eventually decided not to run for re-election. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate in the 1952 presidential election, attempted
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Jonathan Wainwright. Truman sent Vaughan as his representative, which was seen as a slight, as Vaughan was despised by the public and professional soldiers alike as a corrupt crony. "It was a shameful thing to fire MacArthur, and even more shameful to send Vaughan," one member of the public wrote to Truman. MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress where he delivered his famous "" speech, in which he declared: In response, the Pentagon issued a press release noting that "the action taken by the President in relieving General MacArthur was based upon the