Getting The Right Leadership Without The Bad Guys
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/new-york-youve-been-warned-b555b8d8?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1
If Zohran Mamdani believes that those who oppose his election to be mayor of New York City are doing so because he is a Muslim, he needs to reassess. He is an avowed social democrat with true socialist policies that will undoubtedly drive tax paying, high earning city dwellers into Connecticut as Peggy Noonan observes in the attached piece from The Wall Street Journal on November 1.
Mamdani is a political novice. He is 34 years of age with no administrative leadership experience. By any accounts, in the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, he is the wrong guy for the job. He may well be a good guy personally. His policies are virtually anti-American and certainly anti-capitalism. He wants to lead the city at the center of the world’s economy. This is a really bad move for New York City.
And if the Democratic Party believes Mamdani is an Obama-like figure that can win them back the White House, the Democratic Party needs to have its collective head examined. The last person the American voters would put in the presidency is a democratic socialist, let alone a Muslim one. Liberal policies will not win the Democrats back the government no matter what AOC and Bernie say on TV. Momdani as mayor of NYC is a really bad leadership plan.
Recently, I have had the horrible experience of sitting on a committee for an institutional entity that is sponsored by a large, powerful, and rich corporation. The committee is looking for a CEO for the small entity which is the subsidiary of the larger corporation. Instead of letting the committee do its work vetting candidates, the overarching corporate ownership has put a part-time CEO in charge of the smaller entity and then installed another person unvetted by our committee, to assist the part-time CEO. For once, our committee pushed back and gave this idea a lukewarm reception. We got lucky. The installed unvetted candidate withdrew his name after some on our committee viewed him as a “bad guy.”
The Trump Administration also has a track record of installing the wrong people in leadership roles, some of whom seem to be really bad guys. Of course, the entire process of vetting Trump nominees was corrupted because Congress is owned by Trump and no senators would dare oppose any Trump choices for agency leadership positions. For example, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth seem way over their heads and Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget and thought to be the main contributor to Project 2025, the conservative guide to a new federal government, essentially wants to dismantle the government leaving whatever is left to be owned by the President. He seems to be a really bad guy. He has relished the massive lay-offs and the utilization of the government shutdown by Trump to shrink regulatory agencies and take more and more control.
An excellent summary of Trump’s attack on the federal bureaucracy engineered by Mr. Vought can be heard here on Fresh Air:
In most instances, there is a process to choose leaders, vet candidates, and finalize leadership choices. Bad guys are supposed to be weeded out by these processes. In elective politics, corporate decision making, and the federal government, the processes are being subsumed by larger forces that will do anything to get their way. Such forces must be resisted as members of the committee on which I sit did this very week. It was the Senate’s job to prevent Mr. Trump from installing incompetents and bad guys in positions of power. But, Trump’s only criteria for appointing these people is that they will do what he tells them to do.
This same philosophy has been installed in the University of Texas System with ex-state representatives moving into critical jobs in the UT System while any faculty input in the form of Faculty Senates is eradicated while the state’s political leadership emasculate higher education in Texas. These appointees are loyal to Dan Patrick who want to relegate faculty to the classroom (no DEI discussions, please) and their research labs with not even the pretense of shared government any longer.
Strong arm tactics are everywhere resulting in many poor leadership choices. It is sad when the least able are installed in such positions of power. It is also very hard to prevent it. But we must try.
And above all, avoid the bad guys.
I was recently asked whether I might do a particular job for the committee on which I sit. It would necessitate close work with the larger corporate sponsor. I said no. First, I have other things I am doing during my retirement. I do not want to return to the daily management of an office staff. Second, I would have had to work with bad guys. I have had enough of working with bad guys. No, thank you.
