“When Their Leaders Hear Their Voices”
By
Leonard Zwelling
“When the American people are strong and confident, when their leaders hear their voices, America, whatever storms it might be weathering, will make it through.”
President Ronald Reagan
The attached essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Meacham was in The World Street Journal’s Review section on November 7.
Its essence is rather simple. From FDR to Reagan, the American people voted for different specific policies along the continuum of the political spectrum between the philosophies of these two presidents. At no time did the American people choose to jettison the founding principles of the Constitution, the most important of which is fealty to law and order in the country and in the behavior of its leaders. When President Nixon broke the law, eventually public sentiment turned against him. He was, in fact, “a crook.”
In 2016, the American people installed in the White House an untested, inexperienced game show host to lead. The American people removed him in 2020 only to see his minions attack the seat of government in a riot of dissatisfaction over the results of a free and fair election on January 6, 2021. Unlike decades of his predecessors, out-going President Trump did not attend the inauguration of Mr. Biden held at the site of his followers’ destruction two weeks earlier. There really were no visible signs of the peaceful transfer of power. Trump gave the country notice that day that law and order is under threat when he is in charge.
Then, due to a number of factors, Mr. Trump was given a second chance despite warnings from all corners of the political world, except from the Republican Party, of the danger he presented. The GOP had lost its bearings. So had the Democrats opting to to embrace a senile leader rather than refusing to have someone clearly in decline choose his own vice president to succeed him. She was defeated handily at the polls. America is never going to go for one president trying to name his or her successor. (And it won’t in 2028, either.)
In the two years following the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, the United States has been hobbled by a leader who cannot hear the voices of those he was elected to lead and in fact causes them pain with an unnecessary war, tariffs, and associated increases in the cost of living while wading neck-deep into transparent corruption and the lining of his own pockets and those of his friends and family.
On November 3, 2026, not being able to get rid of the sitting president, the American people did the next best thing. They rejected everything he did and is doing. The American people might be split down the middle if they had to choose between FDR or Reagan today. They were unified against Trump. They had had enough.
I would like to argue that this is the true beauty of the American system of government and the definitive answers delivered by the way we choose our leaders. This is unlike what happens in some parliamentary systems, like the one in Israel.
But what about systems with no elections? What happens when the principles guiding an important institution are tarnished and abandoned by the leadership in a system where those being led have no say and those leading have to answer to no one?
Welcome to MD Anderson.
The first three presidents of Anderson understood what the place was for and worked hard to nurture the two assets they were given when they got the leadership role—the MD Anderson name and the MD Anderson faculty, although R. Lee Clark founded the value of the Anderson name, hired the faculty, and nurtured both.
When I arrived in 1984, I was pleasantly surprised by the fealty the faculty had to delivering the best of patient care to those with cancer. I was even more pleased when under John Mendelsohn, “research-driven patient care” became the watchword of the faculty.
Just as is true for the United States, the faculty and staff of MD Anderson believed in a guiding set of principles, lived those values, and those values were shared by the leadership of the cancer center.
This began to slip under John Mendelsohn when he got involved in two scandals due to his attempts to line his pockets by using his position at Anderson to sit on corporate boards, one of which was with a company whose business he knew nothing about. That was Enron. He then waded into conflict of interest when trying to commercialize a drug he invented by using the clinical trials system of the institution he led to prove the value of his drug without patients being informed of his financial interest in their participation in Anderson trials. In this, Mendelsohn forgot the guiding principles of the institution he led. The research results of an academic institution cannot be doubted because those results may benefit the pocketbook of those doing the research or those to whom the investigators report.
Unfortunately, Mendelsohn’s successors have taken paths most like the one taken by Donald Trump in the White House. Rather than worry about what is best for the American people, Trump made himself rich at the expense of the people who elected him. Last Tuesday, those people pushed back. But what can the MD Anderson faculty do after two failed presidencies due to greed and incompetence?
The faculty, unlike the American people, do not get a vote.
With new leadership at the top of the Texas State government, this is the moment for all University of Texas faculty to demand the restoration of Faculty Senates, the paring back of the unlimited powers of campus presidents, and a reconstitution of a dialogue between elected representatives of the faculties of all the campuses and the leadership of UT. Someone has to oversee whether the culture of the UT campuses reflects traditional academic ethics or, like Donald Trump’s White House, have become frankly toxic.
The faculty cannot vote and the Regents are still in charge, but there can be no doubt that the current Regents are as incompetent as the current occupant of the White House. Perhaps, Governor Hinajosa can effect some changes as soon as she is sworn in. It might start with some drastic changes in the UT leadership itself and the make-up of the Board of Regents. Surely someone in Texas must care about academic freedom and representative shared governance in the state’s flagship institutions of higher education.
As for the state’s cancer center, the Board of Regents would serve every MD Anderson patient and faculty member well by identifying a world-class physician-investigator to become the sixth president of MD Anderson as soon as possible. New construction is being erected. The face of cancer treatment is changing at lightning speed. MD Anderson needs to return to the basics of patient care, research, education, and prevention—all faculty-driven activities.
The last president spoke of One MD Anderson where faculty were no more than higher paid classified employees. That is ridiculous. The faculty are who the patients of today and the future count on. No cancer patient comes from Louisiana, Oklahoma, or Saudi Arabia to see someone in the HR office. Sorry, Dr. Pisters. The faculty are special. Let’s make the faculty a part of governing MD Anderson again.
