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 MacArthur a legal opinion that this applied "solely to formal public statements and not to communiqués, correspondence or personal conversations." MacArthur made similar remarks in press statements on 13 February and 7 March 1951. In February and March 1951, the tide of war began to turn again, and MacArthur's forces drove north. Seoul, which had fallen on 4 January, was recaptured on 17 March. This raised hopes in Washington that the Chinese and North Koreans might be amenable to a ceasefire agreement, and Truman prepared a statement to this effect. MacArthur was informed of it by the Joint Chiefs on