Qualifications

Qualifications

By

Leonard Zwelling

One of the great questions surrounding this presidential campaign is whether either of the candidates is qualified to be the commander-in-chief.

On the surface, Donald Trump has the greatest qualification for the job you can have. He once had it. But was he effective?

Being qualified means having done worthwhile and relevant work in your past AND having done it well.

Mr. Trump surely did it, but the many ways he challenged American political processes after the last election and in particular his collecting and letting loose the people who assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2021 may well disqualify him for further service. I believe he stoked an insurrection. I also believe that he has yet to be held accountable for it. I also believe that if he is elected, he will pardon many of those found guilty for their behavior on January 6 including himself.

There is also no doubt that Mr. Trump sequestered confidential documents at Mar A Lago after his presidency and clearly tried to influence the outcome of the election in Georgia. He has just been lucky that the judicial system is so corrupt and populated by the inept that he may never have to answer for his behavior. Whether or not the courts find him guilty of anything further (remember he is already guilty of 34 felonies in New York), Mr. Trump’s ethics and morals and his incessant lying disqualify him from being President of the United States.

Now, let’s look at the Vice President.

She had never been elected to any office outside of California before she became Vice President. Her performance in that role has been mediocre at best. She didn’t even have to compete for her current place on the ballot of the Democratic Party. It was handed to her by her boss. Does that make her qualified? Absolutely not.

In other words, no one of the contenders for President or Vice President, for that matter, really have earned their positions through a rigorous vetting system. Mr. Walz was picked in a matter of weeks and Mr. Vance is very inexperienced.

Does this bother you? It does me.

I have also been bothered when the last two presidents of MD Anderson were chosen.

Let’s travel back a bit.

The original president of MD Anderson was R. Lee Clark. He invented MD Anderson. He was also a great cancer surgeon and a master politician. He also highly valued research. He was qualified to be the institution’s leader at the beginning.

Charles “Mickey” LeMaistre was next. He had already been Chancellor of the University of Texas and was at the forefront of the movement to outlaw tobacco as a dangerous carcinogen. He was on the federal panel that originally identified tobacco as causing cancer. He also invented the concept of an active prevention effort in cancer centers. He was qualified.

John Mendelsohn had it all. He was a physician, oncologist, hematologist, and world-class investigator who, as J Freireich would say, invented a treatment. No one questioned his qualifications to lead MD Anderson.

Ron DePinho, not so much. While a world-class investigator and a physician, he was neither an oncologist nor hematologist and had really only run a small institute before getting the Anderson job. His greed, nepotism, and inexperience showed quickly and he was gone very fast.

The current president is Peter Pisters. He was an academic cancer surgeon at MD Anderson with some peripheral administrative training and some management assignments before heading back to Canada for a brief sojourn managing a program there. He has virtually no research credentials. It was not at all clear that he was the most qualified person for the job when Ray DuBois, a past provost at Anderson with deep research credentials and an MD degree, vied for the job as well. He was clearly the more qualified candidate.

The bottom line is that one of the two candidates for President of the United States, both unqualified, will be elected and we will have to hope that her learning curve is fast or that his past performance is not a harbinger of the future.

As for Anderson, its fate is in the hands of the UT Board of Regents.

Talk about unqualified…