You have to be divorced from reality to think that Palin is helping McCain. Her negatives in polling data are huge - clearly the worst of the four candidates, and even David Brooks just recently called her a “cancer” on the Republican party.
Her being so easily turned into a hilarious charicature on SNL has only helped to cement her anvil status in the eyes of millions who might not pay that much attention to politics. On the other hand, most people have probably seen on of her interview segments with Couric.
But having said all that, being divorced from reality would not necessarily be a novelty around here.
Agreed. She gave the party a brief boost and provided everyone (media+public) with an exciting week or so of news. But once the ‘wow’ factor wore off and people started seriously looking at her, everything quickly came unravelled.
As to the OP, I agree that Romney would have been a much more viable and attractive candidate. People would eventually get over the “Mormon” thing; hell, we’ve got a black candidate and a woman VP candidate. A handsome, centrist Republican would have certainly pulled votes from the scary black guy.
I don’t imagine any Republican would win over the SDMB consensus. That’s a given.
But among my family, friends, and co-workers, I haven’t heard anyone who thinks Palin is a credible choice. And many of my peers are the kind of rednecks that McCain needed to win over - the kind of people who weren’t going to vote for Obama because he’s a Muslim but now aren’t going to vote for McCain either.
Sling some adjectives my way, please. Why don’t you like Carly Fiorina? Did you work closely with her, or anywhere at HP, and if so for how long? Any anecdotes from personal knowledge? I’m not defending her, or attacking you; I just don’t know much about her. Thanks.
McCain is the best they had . He sucks. The cupboard was bare. The DOW is below 900. Who could they offer that could overcome this mess? They sat back and allowed the system to be looted.
I’ve never worked for HP, but know people who did (they got spun off.) HP, founded by engineers looked on as gods in the Valley, had something called the HP way. She was from the outside, from AT&T where I have worked, and clashed with the culture something fierce. One complaint I heard is that even when things were tight she traveled with her retinue in the corporate jets. The guy who took over the spinoff Agilent, on the other hand, flew commercial jets and showed up by himself, and was considered a true HPer.
She was considered to have screwed up the Compaq acquisition, and she kept missing revenue numbers. Just before she got canned, there was a big article in Forbes or BW about how she and the board didn’t get along.
CEOs usually land on their feet. There is enough churn that someone will hire a fired CEO, especially one with her visibility. No one has, which I find odd. You can see how she shot off her mouth about Palin not being qualified to be a CEO. It’s true, but it was a stupid thing to say, and irrelevant, since there is a big difference in the job of CEO and president.
She was pretty much a nobody at AT&T the time I left, but no one who stayed on at Lucent had much good to say about her either. I think there was some dirt I read in a book about the fall of Lucent, but I don’t remember clearly enough to say anything.
Mark Hurd, formerly of NCR and a technical person, took it over and has done very well with HP, so there were no fundamental issues.
Yeah, wasn’t Romney a hedge fund manager, the very epitome of a Wall Street fat-cat? I can’t see that being anything other than a huge liability right now.
In fact, when the economy went to hell, he could argue that he saved the Olympics when they went to hell, so he has a proven track record of working through a crisis. The negative was that his company got those companies it acquired or managed to lay off people, but I don’t think that is such a big negative anymore.
The independents are more important than the crazy evangelicals in this election, and McCain screwed up by pandering to the latter.