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Keep an Eye on Carly
I have a general rule when it comes to prominent politicians: I don’t want to meet them. In moments of grandiosity, I try to convince myself that this is a professional imperative — don’t want to let personal affinities or biases color my analysis and all that. The real explanation, of course is much simpler: I tend to hate them. Republican or Democrat. Male or female. Young or old. The vast majority of them have precisely the kind of personalities you’d expect from individuals whose entire career is predicated on public approbation: insecure at some level, intellectually dull, and desperate for validation. Combine that with the kind of ego that’s necessary to believe that you’re uniquely fit to rule over your peers and you get a lot of deeply maladjusted individuals. There are, of course, exceptions. It’s way too cynical to believe that all politicians are sociopaths — it’s just a supermajority of them.
Back in 2010, I had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with one of the outliers: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who, at the time, was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in California. Now, I wasn’t by any means a part of Carly’s inner circle — I doubt she’d even remember my name — but we did get to talk, one-on-one and at length, on a couple of occasions. She was intellectually sharp and off-the-cuff eloquent. She was tough as hell (a trait underscored by the fact that she was campaigning in the immediate aftermath of completing chemotherapy for breast cancer). She was a genuine, honest-to-god conservative rather than the milquetoast types than normally come out of the C-suite. And she was supremely poised, yet without a whiff of the arrogance that’s native to her trade. I knew she was going to lose to Barbara Boxer — what is California politics if not a boulevard of broken dreams? — but I remember thinking that it would be a real shame if she never became a star within the Republican Party.
Well, that celebrity turn may be on its way. Carly, as you may have heard, is flirting with a presidential bid. And, as Scott Conroy notes at RealClearPolitics, there are some surprising rumblings coming out of New Hampshire:
Recent conversations with plugged-in Republicans across the state reveal a consensus that Carly Fiorina—the former Hewlett-Packard CEO—is positioning herself well as a potential dark horse White House contender capable of making a serious run.
…
It’s not just Fiorina’s gender that’s captured the interest of influential New Hampshire Republicans.
In interviews, several cited her private sector experience, engaging presence on the stump and compelling life story as a woman who rose from a secretarial position to helming one of the nation’s biggest corporations as reasons to believe that she could end up in the mix once rank-and-file primary voters start tuning in.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say how impressed they were and that they went in to see her thinking it’d be the same old, ‘I’m an outsider’ speech, and they were wowed by her depth and insight,” said Concord GOP committee chair Kerry Marsh. ”I’ve heard nothing but good things, and she seems to make herself very available.”
…
While her background as the only business executive in the race figures to endear her to the business-minded Republicans in New Hampshire who typically rally behind a contender with close ties to the GOP establishment, Fiorina has also been impressing activists from the conservative grassroots wing of the party.
Andrew Hemingway, who earned the backing of several New Hampshire-based Tea Party-aligned groups during his unsuccessful bid for the 2014 Republican gubernatorial nomination, called Fiorina “someone to watch,” noting that he had so far found her to be “an articulate, accomplished, and competent executive capable of leading this country.”
“I believe she could be a surprise to a lot of people,” Hemingway said. “Doubling the size of HP while CEO, conducting one of the largest mergers in tech history and with the vision of a tech entrepreneur … these make up a unique and very compelling profile.”
Now, a few caveats. As Conroy notes, there’s plenty of oppo fodder in Fiorina’s HP tenure, which was far from smooth. And, from where I sit, I’d still consider her a decided long-shot in this field. There’s simply too much experience amongst the potential Republican candidates to imagine a former business executive with zero elected experience leapfrogging the pack.
That said, I suspect that Fiorina — who is supremely good behind a podium — is going to get a lot of people’s attention once the debates start. That could well propel her to the top of the vice presidential short list (where — and this is just early, albeit informed, speculation — I expect she’d be keeping company with Susana Martinez and, assuming he doesn’t get the nomination, Marco Rubio). At the very least, I’d be shocked if she doesn’t end up somewhere in the next Republican administration.
Not convinced? How about a sampling of her remarks today at CPAC:
When I was typing in that little company, and indeed throughout my career, I have needed someone to take a chance on me. When I battled cancer, I needed many helping hands. When my husband Frank and I lost our younger daughter Lori to the demons of addiction, we relied on the strength of our family, the solace of our faith, but we also were lifted up by the prayers and kindness of so many strangers who became blessings in our lives.
Everyone needs a helping hand but no one wants to be trapped in the web of dependence that has been woven over decades in our nation. To fulfill their potential, people need an education, tools, training, support—and they need a job.
The President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union once said this: “We cannot be held responsible for the performance of the students in our classrooms because too many of them are poor and come from broken families.” Liberals may be prepared to dismiss and disregard Americans because of their circumstances. Liberals may be prepared to consign some to lives of dependence while others—who think they are smarter and better—take care of them.
We as conservatives are not. We know that no one of us is better than any other one of us. We know that each of us has God-given gifts and can live a life of dignity, purpose and meaning.
Work is a central part of such a life and so we must rebuild Main Street. Elizabeth Warren is right: crony capitalism is alive and well. Government and government programs have grown so big, so powerful, so costly and so complex that only the big and the powerful can prosper. But Elizabeth Warren is dead wrong about how to end crony capitalism. You see, whether it is Dodd-Frank, ObamaCare or net-neutrality, all this government complexity means the big get bigger, the small disappear, and the powerless are trapped.
We are now destroying more businesses than we are creating. Most Americans get their start the way I did – in a small business. The dry-cleaners, tacquerias, coffee shops, hairdressers and real-estate firms of American Main Street create most of our new jobs and employ half our people. So if we want more jobs, we need more small businesses.
But we need leaders not managers. You see, managers are people who do the best they can within existing constraints and conditions, who tinker around the edges of a problem. We need leaders who do not accept what is broken simply because it has always been that way. We need leaders that will change the order of things. Leaders who see and seize possibilities and know the highest calling of leadership is to unlock potential in others.
Not a bad start. What say you?
Published in General
Troy – I couldn’t agree with you more about politicians in general. I have met more than a few, though certainly fewer than you since my occupation has made such meetings inadvertent and unavoidable rather than necessary.
Maybe this woman is different. I guess we may see.
I always enjoy your appearances on the podcasts – you should think about being a regular on the Big Podcast.
Carly Fiorina is everything that the Democrats say they want women to be.
That she lost to Boxer was a crime.
As if his smoking habit wasn’t bad enough already. I totally agree with you but, like most of the high-level Ricochet staffers, I imagine his cup runneth over.
Thx for the heads up on this impressive person. She certainly has my attention now.
You’re not grandiose Troy. Your take on the psyche of politicians is sound. I only know the Fiorina of TV, but she definitely has all the appeal you note. For me, she radiates the quality of feminine sensuality. Other women politicians have brains and looks, but come off bitchy. Palin, not bitchy, could look sexy at times, but came across as the smartest, best looking, older chick, in the sports bar. But sexy isn’t sensual. Some are pretty, but bookish looking.
No Republican can make a dent in CA, so throw out that loss. They look up to the witless Patricia Arquettes, who takes their cues from the clever Barbara Boxers. Come to think of it, in deep blue CA, and maybe NY, a woman pol is at a disadvantage if she’s a little too attractive. The homlies have their movie star followers to look beautiful for them.
As a Californian, she didn’t run a particularly inspiring campaign. Though, to be fair, she did completely outshine Meg Whitman. Rather faint praise, though…
She had a tough time there at the end of her tenure at HP but I have always admired her. I’d like to see Fiorina run in the primaries and establish herself as a candidate for a cabinet appointment if the GOP gets so lucky as to win the presidential.
She has been on my radar for a little while now. Nice work at CPAC.
My personal belief is that foreign policy is going to have to be a priority for the next president. The current guy has dug us a big hole to get out of … Russia, Iran, ISIS, etc. … And the current crop of potential candidates is kind’a thin in that area. She, at least, has the experience any large-company CEO has of dealing with foreign suppliers and competitors and financiers. And she was hooked in with some ‘lets help make the DOD more efficient’ business groups….so she may have thought some about Defense policy. But that’s all I know. Does anyone know anything about her foreign affairs thinking?
This. She’s definitely qualified for a cabinet post.
I don’t know nearly enough about her to know whether she should actually be on the VP shortlist, but I do know this: it would be a huge asset to the ticket to have someone in the VP slot who can go after Hillary Clinton as effectively as she does.
Yeah, but do we want her sidelined after the campaign? The Veep never actually does much, and from what I understand her core competencies are in management and organization…
Fiorina was an incompetent business leader. The merger was a disaster, and shareholder value was a loss. This is not a disqualifier for a potential president, but it gives one pause.
My concern would be that she would aim to “fix” government (as Romney wanted to do) as opposed to maximizing freedom so Americans can seek their own destinies with minimal interference.
You’re not wrong here.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/03/video-the-freaky-deaky-carly-fiorina-sheep-attack-ad/comment-page-1/
The “demon sheep” ad has been marked as “private” so it seems someone has realized how bad it was. I have mixed feelings that they decided to flush it down the memory hole though.
Looks like someone else made a copy (go to 2minute 21 second mark for the demon sheep):
Her CPAC speech was the first time I saw her. I thought she rocked.
I read articles about her on Arstechnica and Slashdot about this way before she became a political figure and it definitely soured me on her.
Dennis Prager (who I am a huge fan of) gushes about her, which makes me shake my head.
I’m willing to be wrong though.
To be fair, she presided over HP during the 2000 bubble burst. Those numbers at the start were bubble numbers.
I’ve heard her criticised for cutting best parts of HP off and selling them (the research divisions), and outright discontinuing others (the engineering calculator division), and sacrificing HP commitment to quality for a merger with Compaq.
She has her defenders.
And her shady attackers.
Without spending a great deal of time myself researching, I have to admit I don’t know if she was a villain destroying a great company, or whether she was valiantly trying to save what was left of it when it was already dying.
I have trouble shaking my bias against short sighted big corporate types though. She was a woman brought in to excite everyone with change and she floated away on a golden parachute after HP transformed from
to
(disclaimer: both books are on my amazon wishlist, but I haven’t read them yet)
How much of this is fair to blame on her?
How much of this is just sour grapes?
I don’t know.
Amen to that. Carly had some innovative wacky stuff (Demon Sheep) but could have been much stronger.
Whitman was pathetic. Who can run against Jerry Brown, fail to mention “Rose Bird” during that campaign, and get taken down by the nanny nonsense?
To be fair, however, they both were accomplished, achieving women who were Republicans and therefore were going to be ignored or crucified by the California media, which make the national media look like Fox News.
Seconded.
Trader 2 – Hp 17-BII
Brain, regular pulse, poise and that brown piece in hand. Nothing else matters. Excel is nice and helps when you actually have time at hand. But before any later laser printers that was reliability and a condensed, quality product at a decent price.
For all other qualities of hers, the podium appeal and potential gender-based electability, I doubt that she suits the leadership position to defend the free world.
Well, I was thinking of going to an event she’s speaking at next week, but it’s in Keene, which is two hours away from us, and it’s at 7:45 in the morning. So, no. I’m not going to that one.
During her campaign Fiorina was highly sensitive to the issues of the farmers in the Central Valley as they battled against govt intervention to filter scarce water resources toward rescuing “imperiled native fish.”
Frankly, I haven’t had a reasonably priced salad in CA for a couple of years. Much to my dismay, my favorite restaurant in the OC admitted they are importing lettuce from Florida!
aw, lost our chance at a boots on the ground report.
I just watched her interview with Greta Van Susteren and I was impressed. I have had a strange theory about popularity since I was a child. I developed this theory (which I haven’t fleshed out into coherent thoughts yet) based on the instant popularity of a new transfer student into our elementary school more than 50 years ago. He was a fairly normal guy but he had a severe stutter. I think his popularity was partly based on the fact that although he stuttered horribly, he didn’t let it keep him from talking. I think the stuttering endeared him to people who were naturally inclined to want him to succeed.
How does that apply to Carly? I am not sure. I said I haven’t fleshed this theory out yet, but I think she instinctively uses every asset at her disposal without being obnoxious or overtly political. She looks like someone who can kill you with a smile and make you not notice the wound.
Is she pro life? If not, she will not get the nomination, just as it is not possible for a pro life Democrat to be nominated for president. A place in the cabinet, possibly, but not the nomination.
I’m not sure this is true. A social-issues candidate who deviates from party orthodoxy will not pass muster, sure. However, a candidate heavily focused on the other two legs of the stool (foreign and fiscal policy) might be able to get away with some heterodox social stuff. Nothing too obvious or overt, but they would probably be able to sideline the issue in the campaign.
It’s possible… barely possible… That she could get away with something like “I’m pro-choice, but I do not believe the Constitution guarantees a right to abortion, and I would never nominate a justice to the Supreme Court who believes it does.”
Anything less than that, and the entire base of the party would walk.
But there’s a lot more behind that, and correlation isn’t causation. HP was facing the same types of challenges that companies like IBM (specifically its Microelectronics Division, that I used to work in) ran into – shrinking margins on its core products, increased competition, lower commodity prices on core components. The margins on former cash cows were dropping, the old models of “big iron” and distributed networks had been eviscerated, and, well, you can’t stop a train in 100 yards.
I spent some time working with people at HP. They seemed to be a lot like IBMers, when I was there (mid to late 1990s): Nervous, hard-working, and occasionally a bit wild-eyed because the ground was constantly moving under their feet.
Oh, and for that chart to be complete, try throwing up HP’s direct competitors’ stocks, and well, I just did.
Chris
She is pro-life.
I can’t WAIT to see Farley on the campaign trail! Should be a hoot!
Oh. Carly. My bad.
All they’d have to say is that Roe v. Wade is terrible law (which it is) and that this is an issue that should be handled at the state level. Personal conviction would never have to come into it if they were skilled at verbal fencing enough.
Troy,
This is the problem with the Republican Party depending too much on triangulating overthink when it comes to elections. She’s a woman! There that solves x y & z problems we have with a b & c demographic. People vote their gut. Carli & Meg didn’t come off either as tough or charismatic. Tough would have really energized the base and made some converts. Charismatic would have pulled in the middle of the road. She is too much a female Mitt Romney. Great person but didn’t have that ‘smell the goal line’ political instinct to win.
Of course, I don’t want to be too hard. California sucks for Republicans.
Regards,
Jim