Ouster took Tillerson completely by surprise

WASHINGTON — Rex Tillerson spent a tumultuous year at the helm of the State Department, frequently undercut by the president he disagreed with on key foreign policy issues and derided by many of his employees who blamed him for marginalizing their role and diplomacy itself.

But after months of denying he intended to resign, Tillerson was ousted Tuesday just as he seemed to be hitting his diplomatic stride.

In recent weeks, he grew even more outspoken in his criticism of Russia, more confident that his patient pressure on North Korea was bearing fruit and seemingly more comfortable that he would outlast his many critics in the West Wing.

In the end, no one was more surprised that Tillerson was fired than Tillerson himself. As recently as Monday night, while he was in the air flying back from a weeklong trip to Africa, an aide said Tillerson was staying put.

In a statement from a top aide about five hours after his plane landed at Joint Base Andrews, Tillerson made clear that the gulf between the methodical former corporate executive and the mercurial president was as wide as ever.

“The secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security and other areas,” said Steve Goldstein, undersecretary of public diplomacy for the State Department.

“The secretary did not speak to the president, and is unaware of the reason” for his firing, he added.

Tillerson’s father died on Feb. 25. Two days after returning to Washington from the funeral, he departed for Africa, where he was sidelined for a day by illness.

His departure followed months of disagreements with the White House over staffing and administrative matters at the State Department, which has a large backlog of unfilled jobs.

But what may have done him in was a fatal disconnect over what Trump saw as Tillerson’s conventional approach to policy matters.

In picking Rex Wayne Tillerson to head the State Department, Trump told associates he wanted a secretary of state who looked the part. He liked Tillerson’s camera-ready image and acerbic Texas drawl, real as barbed wire from a man who was named after two 1950s Western movie stars, Rex Allen and John Wayne. He also liked Tillerson’s resume as chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil.

But the two men, who did not know each other before Trump’s election, never clicked. For Tillerson, despite weekly lunches and frequent phone calls, Trump remained unpredictable and sometimes inscrutable. For Trump, Tillerson became an embodiment of “establishment” naysayers.

Tillerson has no singular foreign policy cause or achievement to his credit, but he had worked to open the door to talks with North Korea.

Although Trump dismissively said last year that Tillerson was wasting his time trying to talk to “Little Rocket Man,” as he dubbed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the summit that Trump agreed to last week is partly born of Tillerson’s efforts.

A part of his legacy is in his pushback on Trump policies that Tillerson considered unwise, battles he did not often win.

There was an element of anticlimax to Tillerson’s exit.

Much of his tenure was dogged by rumors that he was fed up and ready to quit, or about to be pushed out. The rumors were persistent enough that the possibility of Tillerson’s departure was dubbed “Rexit.”

Tillerson consistently, and rather wearily, denied it. In January, he told CNN he would still be around at the end of 2018.

Tillerson emerged as one of the administration’s strongest voices critical of Russia. For months, he had been saying that Russia clearly interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, even as Trump shied away from any critical remarks. On Monday, Tillerson told reporters traveling with him that he was “very, very concerned” with Russia’s growing aggression.

Tillerson’s firing be a prelude to big changes ahead.

It comes just two months before the next deadline for the Iran nuclear deal, when Trump must decide whether to reimpose nuclear-related sanctions as he has said he is inclined to do, effectively withdrawing from the multilateral agreement reached in 2015 by the Obama administration and other world powers.

Tillerson’s departure further suggests that Trump is already out the door on the agreement, even as he prepares for talks with Kim. could policy