Fix It Or Blow It Up?
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bipartisan-slippage-of-standards-biden-pardon-hunter-trump-unusual-administration-nominees-289e0952
Before my liberal friends go nuts fearing the Trump team will blow up the federal government and bring the country to a standstill, they should try to understand why anyone would want to destroy the current Washington bureaucracy.
The government does not seem to be working for most average Americans. And now, the President of the United States, who promised to follow the law, has pardoned his good-for-nothing son who is undoubtedly guilty of tax evasion, illegal gun possession, and drug possession. Furthermore, President Biden may well pardon everyone on the Trump enemies list including himself.
Then let’s again revisit the Trump lawsuits in Florida, Georgia, and Washington in which he was indicted for having classified documents that were not his, for trying to influence a federal election, and for instigating an insurrection. It is likely that all of these legitimate lawsuits will be dismissed before even getting to trial.
From these facts one could readily conclude that there is one set of laws for the high-level politicians, Democrat or Republican, and one for the rest of us. And, if that is the case, the system itself may be irredeemable and ought to be torn down.
Peggy Noonan makes the bipartisan nature of corruption clear in her op-ed of December 7 in The Wall Street Journal.
If you believe, as I do, that MD Anderson has fallen victim to the same corruption over the past twenty years as has the federal government, then if you were the new president of MD Anderson, your first step may well be to tear it all down and start again.
Fortunately, you don’t have to.
When John Mendelsohn began his tenure as president in 1996, he took a more reasoned approach. First, he rapidly assessed that the entire level of executive vice presidents he inherited from Dr. LeMaistre would not fit his management style nor meet his academic goals. He jettisoned them quickly. He did blow up something.
Then he took a long, yellow, legal pad from department to department trying to assess what was needed to increase the success of MD Anderson in research and clinical care. He spoke with every faculty member who attended his meetings.
He learned that he needed to drastically improve the services provided by biostatistics and pathology. He moved to hire new leadership and fixed these quickly. Slowly he put his own executive team in place that shared his vision of ”raising the bar” in cancer care and cancer research and did just that. Within five years MD Anderson had undergone a dramatic change for the better and there was nothing destroyed in the process. On the contrary; great things were built.
The Trump team can learn a lot here. Each new department or agency head needs to make a rapid assessment of where that agency or department is in fulfilling its mission to the American people and align its values with those of President Trump. Some changes may need to be sweeping, but they need not be destructive. If Mr. Musk insists on destruction, Mr. Trump needs to send him packing in a Tesla truck.
On the other hand, the next president of MD Anderson will inherit a far greater and costlier mess than Dr. LeMaistre gifted Dr. Mendelsohn. If that person, who cannot come soon enough, will follow the Mendelsohn formula, he or she will probably be successful and eradicate the poisonous culture introduced by Dr. DePinho and reduced to mediocrity by Dr. Pisters.
Again, there is no need for wholesale destruction. Most of the faculty want to do good and do well. It’s the leadership of Anderson that has to go just as the leadership of the United States had to change.
The Trump team needs to remember that they won. Being gracious and strategic is both becoming and smart. Nothing needs to be torn down except the resistance to constructive change.
