Disney's stock has gone nowhere for over a decade, and the company's own former leadership admits the culture-war fights were a self-inflicted wound — bad news for long-term shareholders.

• Al Weiss, the longtime Orlando parks operations chief, was sounded out about the top job years ago but passed because he did not want to move his family to LA.
• Weiss was a conservative Christian who later founded a church-planting group, raising the question of how differently Disney would have played its politics under him.
• Disney is now worth about what it was in 2014, and the company put itself into a fire it did not have to.
• The bigger problem is that Wall Street sees no growth engine: cable is dying, ESPN is squeezed by the cost of sports rights, and streaming did not become the win it looked like.
• Disney is now selling its shows to outside buyers instead of keeping them exclusive, and Hulu is being pushed to the side.

Outlook: Going long on Disney takes courage right now — the next leader has to overturn legacy decisions before the stock can break out of its decade-long stall.