When Leaders Pass Their “Sell-By” Date
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-may-be-losing-his-touch-3d379205?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
Peggy Noonan entitled her Wall Street Journal op-ed for December 13, “Trump May Be Losing His Touch.” This implies that Trump has somehow changed since inauguration day in January. I don’t think he has. I just think he is approaching the point when his constituency has had enough and wants a change. I call this the leadership “sell-by” date. Like a quart of milk, leaders have a certain amount of time when they are fit for consumption, but that time is not infinite. Like milk something sours, but unlike milk it is not the leader who sours, but the opinion of the people being led.
Let me start with a brilliant example of avoiding this phenomenon. My supervisor for the majority of time as a vice president was the Chief Academic Officer Margaret Kripke. In 2007, at the age of only 64, she retired. Why? She said to “always leave the party while you are still having fun.” Margaret did not exceed her “sell-by” date. Thus, her tenure is viewed retrospectively as being fully successful and it was.
Joe Biden did not grasp this concept at all. Because of his mental incapacity, he should have either resigned in 2022 or at least declared he was not going to be a candidate in 2024 and open the nomination to the primary process. Had this occurred, it is unclear who the Democratic nominee would have been, but it was unlikely to have been Kamala Harris who ran a dismal campaign in 2020 for the presidency. Whether someone could have been identified who would have defeated Donald Trump in 2024 will never be known, but had Biden realized he had passed his “sell-by” date, it could have given a Democrat a chance to beat Trump.
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson was keenly aware that he had exceeded his “sell-by” date despite his legislative successes. Vietnam drained him. He wisely chose not to run. Smart man.
Today, as we approach the beginning of 2026 and the anniversary of Trump 2.0’s first year, the question in Washington and around the country is, has Donald Trump reached his “sell-by” date? The November elections in New Jersey and Virginia indicate that Democrats are winning contests easily that were supposed to be close. Is this a harbinger? Hard to tell.
Is the Marjorie Taylor Greene defection indicative of the splintering of MAGA? That’s too soon to tell as well. It is far more likely that if, as is expected, the premiums of those Americans obtaining their health insurance through ObamaCare skyrocket after January 1, and the perception of many Americans that the economy is not getting better for them continues to set in, Mr. Trump’s support, which is already dropping, may truly tank. He may well be approaching his “sell-by” date and doing so far earlier than expected by me.
Mr. Trump has disrupted the normal functions of the American government. At some point the American people are going to ask how they have benefitted from the disruption. As of now the verdict is that they haven’t. We will know more after election day in 2026.
Of course, I cannot pass up the opportunity to discuss my favorite president, Peter Pisters of MD Anderson.
When Dr. Pisters first arrived back from Canada at MD Anderson as president, he and I had breakfast at his request. I reviewed the history of MD Anderson’s politics for him, particularly the scandals that beset John Mendelsohn and the outrageous behavior of Dr. DePinho that led to his firing. I had been inside the Mendelsohn scandals as I had been the spokesman for Anderson and had to defend Mendelsohn to the press. As for DePinho, he invited me to his office along with the leadership of the Faculty Senate once to scold us about leaks to the press. He was truly nasty to me.
At breakfast with Dr. Pisters I gave him some ideas about how I thought things could be improved after the devastation of the DePinho years. He and I continued that discussion over several dinners that also included his wife, Kathy, who I had appointed as a chair of the Clinical Research Committee back when I was a VP, and, of course, the BW. I’d say we had dinner three or four times where we discussed the future of the cancer center.
It became very obvious very fast that nothing I said had been taken seriously by Dr. Pisters. The most important suggestion I made was to make sure his Provost was a great scientist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, if possible. Dr. Pisters split the job of Provost into a Chief Academic Officer and a Chief Scientific Officer, making an anesthesiologist with no research credentials his CAO and a DePinho hand-me-down his Chief Scientific Officer. I knew immediately that Dr. Pisters had no idea what he was doing when it came to leading academics or research efforts and this was going to go badly. I also inferred from the futility of my suggestions that his listening capacity was limited.
Of course, to his credit, he did get MD Anderson through Covid and that is no small accomplishment, although he did have a bit of a hiccup when several faculty members who did not want to take the Covid vaccine for religious reasons were fired. These faculty sued the institution and won and were reinstated. That was an unnecessary battle with faculty by Pisters. He has had many others.
He does seem to be good at fund raising, an important component of his job. But, when it came to the essential leadership of clinical care and research, frankly, he picked hacks as his executives and he was far less than inspirational for the faculty. Part of the problem was that his credentials did not qualify him for the job he had snared somehow.
The likely course he set upon with these poor choices, put him on a timeline to reach his “sell-by” date quickly. His insistence on dismissing faculty for “unprofessional” behavior only added to a widening of the chasm he created between himself and the faculty. It also created an atmosphere of fear. Pisters’ relationship with the faculty is that of a bully who does not understand what research faculty do. How could he understand? He’s never walked in those shoes.
I believe that Dr. Pisters has reached his “sell-by” date. When the Board of Regents decides to stop crying over spilled sour milk remains to be seen, but it is coming and not in the far distant future. Soon.
The rumors I have heard are that Dr. Pisters has interviewed for jobs at two New York institutions, but came up empty. If those institutions did their due diligence and looked at the Pisters record of accomplishment at MD Anderson beyond triumphing in meaningless surveys of hospitals and raising money, or if the search committees in New York somehow surveyed the Anderson faculty, it should come as no surprise that Pisters was not selected for a new, bigger job in New York.
The final person on which I would like to shine the spotlight of “sell-by” date is myself. I did remove myself from leading the clinical research infrastructure part of my job once I read the handwriting on the wall that the clinical research faculty had had enough of me. I probably should have left administration entirely right then. Easy to see looking back. I stayed too long. Once Dr. Kripke left, I too should have left. Again, easy to see looking backwards.
This concept of having reached your “sell-by” date is very important for a leader of anything. When sufficient numbers of those you lead or serve perceive that you are no longer effective or are helpful to them, it’s time to go.
It will be most interesting to watch what Trump and Pisters do. Has either reached his “sell-by” date in the eyes of those being led? It’s not for me to decide. That’s up to the American people in one case and the MD Anderson faculty in another. Neither leader should buy green bananas though.
