I Have A Secret

I Have A Secret

By

Leonard Zwelling

As many readers will know, my wife, Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman, is a rarity among the pediatric faculty at MD Anderson. She actually developed a treatment for cancer. That used to be Dr. Freireich’s criterion for a valuable faculty member.

Liposome-encapsulated Muramyl Tripeptide (MTP) has been approved in many countries around the world to prevent pulmonary metastases from osteogenic sarcoma and has saved more than a few lives. She has been duly feted for this accomplishment winning all kinds of awards. I have been present at many of these award ceremonies and she always gives me a shout out for supporting her in her work.

Now the reverse has only taken place a few times. I just haven’t done all that much to garner awards. Nonetheless, whatever I have done in my professional career could not have been accomplished without Coach K’s support whether that was allowing me to go to business school when we had two kids at home, allowing me to spend a year on my own in Washington, D.C., or retiring to write a few books, I could not have done any of that without her constant encouragement—and driving carpool, paying the bills, and supporting the family. This mutually-assured consideration is our secret.

I say that because we Americans appear to be living in an age where self-aggrandizement with little consideration for the other guy has become the acceptable way to behave at the highest reaches of government. Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk strike me as two self-centered little boys who simply cannot get enough camera time and cannot be told enough how wonderful they are. There’s a lot of that going on in academia as well. Part of the problem in which the northeastern schools find themselves can be attributed to the self-importance of a small minority of students and faculty at these universities, (and at UT, too), who believe that they know better than anyone else when it comes to the war in Gaza or the plight of the Palestinians or, for that matter, the value of critical race theory. It should be obvious by now that no one knows what to do about Gaza or the Palestinians any more than anyone knows what to do in Ukraine. As for critical race theory, well, it seems a legitimate course of study at the collegiate level, but our legislature disagrees.

So, logically, now we have a stand-off between an egomaniacal President and the Ivy League, never known for modesty.

I started with the story about my wife and me because it is the constant thought that each of us could not have done what we did without the other person that has sustained us for over 52 years. As I said, it is our secret. That is what allowed us each to succeed in very different ways. She has the persistence and perseverance of a great investigator. She has never taken her eye off the prize of curing kids with cancer. I was in a constant state of flux, trying something new every few years. But, it worked.

I cannot imagine what a better place the country would be in if President Trump and his allies actually considered making someone other than themselves the object of a push toward success.

Would we have a Pentagon in disarray?

Would there be thousands of former federal employees looking for work in a worsening economy?

Would that economy be growing and the markets setting new records if Mr. Trump just for a second considered stopping his tariff nonsense and embracing our allies and their problems while trying to make headway with our enemies without making threats?

The current President of the United States has no room for anyone else in his universe. He must be the center of attention even as the vicissitudes of his decision making undoes the American economy. After all, what does he care?

There is never a substitute for walking in the other guy’s shoes. Mr. Trump will never do such a thing. In that will be his undoing. Let us hope it is not also ours.