It really has to do with the ability to assimilate a lot of material, and make wise choices and use your resources in order to do that.īut even though presidents have advisors, they are the person at the top who ultimately has to make the decision. It gives you a good example of what can be done when you don’t care who gets the credit. Because I said we have the number 1 neurosurgery department in the country, and we have people who are extremely good at vascular neurosurgery, and tumor surgery, and skull base, and tissue, and I said why don’t we design this operation so that we slot each team in when we get to the part where they would be the expert? And we were literally ten hours ahead of schedule. In one case we decided to get 18 of the people in our department involved. These are not necessarily people who are devoid of ego, and to get them all on the same road, that’s how you accomplish things. What we’ve been able to do in many of those cases is bring together some of the best minds.
And sometimes you also have situations that require more than just your own expertise. Obviously He’s opening the doors.Įxplain to someone who doesn’t know anything about brain surgery why that has something to do with being president.īecause brain surgery is extremely complex. I said Phew! That’s good! obviously all the pundits are wrong. And in a way I was comforted by listening to all the pundits who all said it’s impossible, you can’t do it, you can’t raise all the money, you can’t put together an organization, no one like you has ever done this, you can just forget about it. I certainly wouldn’t want to do something like this if I didn’t feel that the Lord was behind it. I know you’ve talked before about feeling that God wanted you to run. So having had a career as a problem solver, I said, Lord you know I don’t want to do this, but if you open the doors I’ll do it. And then I was hearing from so many people that they just didn’t feel that politics as usual was going to solve the problem. And then so many younger people who were terrified for what was going to happen with their children and grandchildren. Particularly elderly people who told me that they had given up on America and they were just waiting to die. And it just kept building and building, and I began to listen to people and listen to their concerns. And I kind of ignored it and figured it would all go away. But after the prayer breakfast in 2013, there were so many people clamoring for me to do it. It certainly was not my intention to go into the political field.
Why are you trying to come into politics now? Is there really no one else who could do the job? You’ve had an amazing career as a surgeon. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the interview.