Bill-

I am truly sympathetic with your thoughts...............but.... what's done is done. During an early phase of my career I spent countless hours on the mid-watch and wee hours of the morning chasing rainbows espied by marketeers that assured those of us assembled as a 'proposal team' (aka, low- and mid-level managers in a systems engineering/physical and computational sciences contracting firm) had a 90+% chance of winning the deal he has been nurturing. IOW, I have developed an ingrained bias against salesmen. I automatically divide their assessment of a proposed program's success potential by a factor of at least ten. That divisor was much larger when the salesman had nil experience with the specific market audience................that is to acknowledge model airplanes have little in common with with cell phones.
Nonetheless, the salesman, as AMA EVP, doesn't necessarily operate in a vacuum. The position is new, and the degree of autonomy granted to him will be determined by the makeup of the EC as a whole. There are a few, perhaps even a majority now, that seem to have the capability to run AMA effectively, and not just succumb to the allure of the wunderkind, if they can keep their eyes and minds open. Hang in there for a while, and see what direction things take.

Abel