Expect new fiascoes if leaders don’t learn
On Jan. 6, President Donald Trump’s shortcomings re-ran themselves again and maybe not for the last time. His followers who invaded the Capitol also were reviving a familiar script. What seemed spectacularly surprising was law enforcement’s total flop in protecting the Capitol complex. The set of buildings is the seat of the world’s premier legislature, one that is extraordinarily better funded than its peer bodies in London and Paris, for example. It’s located in a city obsessed since 2001 with, and spending untold billions on, security. It was like the disaster of the luxurious, prestigious, “unsinkable” Titanic. Not supposed to happen.
For years in our society, people, often powerful people, controlling resources and making the rules, ostensibly in others’ interests, have failed to deliver the goods. Botching performances they were officially, specifically charged with producing, often with disastrous consequences, although usually not for themselves. I’m not talking about tough combat or firefighting operations; I’m talking about bread-and-butter, generic professional duties. Conceivably, Jan. 6 represented a very close call, a sequence of events just barely skirting the bloody calamities we’ve seen again and again around the world. Imagine Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assassinated. Imagine the moral and political damage that could have been avoided if the Capitol Police force had done its job.
Boards and executive leaders of American institutions of higher education have betrayed their basic stated values in shocking ways in recent years: USC, UCLA, MSU, Penn State, University of Louisville, Harvard, MIT, Liberty University, to pull a few off the top of my head. Locally, the Sweetwater Union High School District, one of the largest in California, is wading through its second destructive management meltdown in 10 years. One of last week’s headlines announced Boeing’s $2.5 billion settlement to atone for criminal actions leading to 346 avoidable deaths in the 737 Max debacle. Boeing! A legendary gem of global industry. In 2014, my bank, Wells Fargo, was named most valuable bank brand in the world and then threw away its reputation and piles of money as a consequence of pursuing appallingly extensive wrongdoing.
Only in 2018, after Michael Bransfield’s retirement as bishop in West Virginia, did the Roman Catholic Church acknowledge that for years he had squandered substantial church funds on his lifestyle (using private jets and lavishly remodeling his home), engaged in sexual harassment and substance abuse, and much else. The hierarchy had ignored early written complaints.
For years, San Diego has operated a debacle production line. The monumental, self-inflicted city financial collapse of close to two decades ago. Disastrous sewage spills. The week of three mayors. Millions spent on consultants for the Balboa Park centennial leading to ... nothing. Electing a brazen sexual harasser as mayor. The city water scandal. The city homelessness hepatitis A scandal. The city Ash Street building scandal. The city streetlight surveillance scandal. For years, despite complaints, La Jolla High School failed to stop one of my son’s teachers from harassing young women on campus.
America’s and San Diego’s leaders and organizations must muscle up in vigilance, the active suppression of threats and the conservative stewardship of our essential assets, tangible and intangible. Otherwise brace for more, inevitable mind-numbing fiascoes like Wednesday’s.