EXTRA: Ted Cruz and Ron
DePinho Are Leaders With Equal Qualifications for Their Jobs Or Ones They Seek
By
Leonard Zwelling
I would like to remind everyone who may have forgotten what
happens when you elect a freshman Senator to be President. It works out poorly.
Why?
Mr. Obama never took the time to develop the relationships
on which a Presidency depends. He was too busy readying himself for the
mountain top to deign to have a beer with those he needed to court until he
criticized Boston police for doing their job and arresting one of his buddies.
In
politics as in life, relationships are everything. They are like flowers in
your own personal garden. They must be tended, fertilized and cultivated with the
delicacy and consideration demanded by orchids. It is these relationships on
which you will need to depend when things go awry. And things always go awry.
Mr. Obama acted as if he needed no one and was beholding to
no one. I guess he voted for himself a lot. He never had the boys and girls on
the Hill over for movie night at the White House let alone state dinners or a
game of golf. This is a huge error and it has come back to haunt him to this
very day. From day one, when I started on the Hill in December of 2008 the word
from the GOP was NO! Or if it was words it was HELL, NO! The GOP did not like
him and were not going to cooperate. They needed to be brought around with a
lot of local politicking. Now that the Republicans are running Capitol Hill,
bet on nothing but gridlock.
Dr. DePinho like the Chosen One from Illinois was big on
Hope and Change. And the funny part is that he was absolutely correct. John
Mendelsohn had started the process but his own financial problems incapacitated
his efforts to “raise the bar” in basic science and his choices in Cancer
Medicine would not allow any drift from the previous philosophy because the
leader of Cancer Medicine wouldn’t think of advising his tennis partner to not
take the money from the Middle East or try to violate HIPAA by proposing to
bank every specimen in the MD Anderson Department of Pathology in a tissue
delicatessen for the use of genomicists who have yet to prove their value to
clinical medicine.
What Dr. DePinho basically said with his Moon Shot proposals
is that MD Anderson is organized improperly. It should be organized along
disease lines not classic clinical and basic science departments. He probably
should have blown up the Division system and just settled for the Moon Shots
with full integration of clinical, basic and prevention sciences along project
lines. He is obviously trying to get there, but now, given his political
problems, will, like his predecessor, probably fall short. He will flame out
like Mr. Obama for the same reason. No good will from those he is to lead.
It is most sad that men of such short vision, cynicism, and
who seem to dislike people manage to ascend to positions of such power, but we
see it every day in American business, politics and academia. Leadership just
isn’t what it used to be and those being led neither follow nor speak truth to
power, instead cowering behind their BMWs hoping to make it through another
clinic.
So now we get Ted Cruz, another freshman Senator wishing to
be the next shiny penny on the beach. Don’t fall for it as the American people
fell for Obama and the Board of Regents for DePinho. Forget about his right-wing
politics. He’s not ready for mature relationships with other humans. He’s too
busy dissing them.
That this new hope of the GOP should choose to announce his
candidacy at a very Christian university to assure every line of his speech
would get a cheer only shows he has no idea who he will have to attract to his
candidacy to become President. He’s counting on the righties to get him the
nomination and for Hillary to annoy most Americans.
Now that may not be all that bad a bet.
Have
you filled out your GOP brackets yet? Me neither, but the fun has just begun.
