1) The CEO of a large company often gets to choose the board of directors. He's at little risk for getting fired.
2) He doesn't suck. Despite the anomalous dip in stock price, Cerner performs well to this day, and Patterson, as was noted in another post, was named one of the best CEOs in the country by Forbes when it comes to maximizing shareholder value.
Forbes, via Dan Lyons, also took SCO's side and printed many things that turned out not to be true. I'm not inclined to treat Forbes as a reliable source.
That said, he might well be good at maximizing shareholder value (e.g. squeezing lots of hours out of salaried employees) and he certainly didn't get fired over this.
2) He doesn't suck. Despite the anomalous dip in stock price, Cerner performs well to this day, and Patterson, as was noted in another post, was named one of the best CEOs in the country by Forbes when it comes to maximizing shareholder value.