What else does she have? Once you eliminate that from her resume, there’s not much left other than “skilled corporate ladder climber”.
Is it her political skill or is it just her gender? Was she just lucky enough to be the affirmation action choice to move up the ladder ?
It’s possible, but even if she was, she did it better than anyone else. And affirmative action usually doesn’t apply to the top spot, thus the “glass ceiling”. Some people at HP really believed in her, and that was probably because she is actually really good at politics. If she’d started out in her 20s in politics working as a staff member for someone and then sought her first seat in her 30s, she might be at the point now where she could run for President.
But she didn’t. She tried her hand in the real world and when given enough responsibility to fail, she failed. Somehow she thinks that entitles her to high office right now. Meg Whitman, who also tried for Senate first, at least was the CEO of a wildly successful company, and she brought that company up from nothing and turned it into a juggernaut. Meg Whitman is 100 times the candidate Carly Fiorina is if we’re talking about actual ability to DO things. But Fiorina is probably better at the politics side of things, which unfortunately in politics is what actually matters.
No, she wouldn’t. CEOs would make lousy presidents. They aren’t used to hearing the word “no” and they’re used to getting their way 100% of the time. Compromise isn’t big on their agenda and they garner no foreign policy gravitas.
I think that you can make an argument that CEOs don’t make good Presidents, but I’d respond that that depends on what the problems of the time are and what traits in a leader are needed to address them. If you believe the government is broken and no one is taking responsibility then a CEO is precisely what you need(or maybe a general). If a CEO with a record of taking charge of a broken company and turning it around was running, I think they’d have a really compelling argument to make.
IT’s true that in lawmaking, the President has to work with, and compromise with, Congress. But there is more to being President than that. The executive branch is led by one person: the President. We only elected that one person(all right, plus the VP, which he chooses). And that one person has the executive power in his or her person, so everything that happens in that branch is his or her direct responsibility. So no, the PResident doesn’t take “no” for an answer when he tells the VA commissioner that he wants service improved at VA hospitals.
Which is not in any way relevant experience to assuming political office. The “politics” involved in corporate ladder climbing are very different to those which result in winning actual political office. Not only that, but they are often diametrically opposed to those required to be effective at governing.
It’s easy to climb the corporate ladder without any leadership skills if you’re shrewd and unscrupulous. All you have to do is to brownnose those above you, deflect criticism onto others while taking credit for their successes, and destroy any rivals along the way. Which is fine if your goal is personal advancement but is fucking terrible for those you purport to lead and often for the organization you work for. Of course, if you advance fast enough you can leave others to fix the results of your incompetence before they start to reflect poorly on you.
I’m not sure how much corporate experience you have, adaher, but I personally have seen this happen multiple times. Do you really want someone in charge of the country whose primary ability is self-enrichment at the expense of others?
I have some problems with CEOs in charge of government.
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The traits that make one become a CEO (being a ruthless bully) aren’t exactly traits I want in someone who will be entrusted with foreign policy.
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Running a government is nothing like running a business. You aren’t trying to turn a profit. You’re not trying to dodge regulations for short term gain, you have to think of the long term best interests of everybody.
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I have a problem with people saying “Government it broken! It can’t create jobs!” and then say “Elect me! I’ll create jobs!” If you hate government so much, stay the fuck out of it.
Well, he was a Romney supporter…
Not too familiar with her or her record at HP, but I would like to comment on a common sentiment mentioned in the OP.
- the president does not “run” the country like a CEO runs a business.
- being a CEO of even a modest company is much harder than being president. HP investors and customers have options. The president runs a bureaucracy that has a monopoly on force. If you can’t run a 200 year old entrenched monopoly with an ideologically subservient population, you have a serious issue.
Hahaha, no. Being President is one of the hardest jobs, period.
This is one of those things that is repeated mindlessly, but never supported in any way. Being president means having to please nobody with nearly infinite resources. CEOs must take resources that are already stretched and arrange them in a way as to satisfy fickle consumers day in and day out.
Take Truman. He pleased nobody using budgets that in real terms were larger than the world has seen and may ever see. Now he is considered one of the greats of all times. Real tough job there, bud.
On the other hand, business owners have a much greater incentive to increase the long term wealth of a company. They will benefit from increasing a company’s wealth. Elected officials do not benefit from the increased long term wealth of a nation. The incentive there is to plunder the country while you control the resources.
Also “turning a profit” allows business operators to know they are increasing the wealth of society. They take means that are of low value to consumers and create ends that are of higher value to consumers, as demonstrated by the market prices of means and ends. The difference is profit.
Hell, Mitt Romney was a CEO who made more money and laid off fewer employees AND was a state governor to boot.
Look how well he did as President!
CEOs aren’t always bullies, and all CEOs deal with “foreign policy”, at least in terms of diplomacy with people they don’t control, all the time, from government officials to executives of other companies. A President can absolutely be a ruthless bully when it comes to his own people(which is the entire federal government), and given the federal government’s performance, some asses probably need to be kicked. The VA might be functioning better by now if the PResident had personally chewed some people in his office.
Not running a profit is the only major difference. YOu don’t have to dodge regulations because regulations don’t apply the same way. Congress provides the only real oversight, so you can break whatever regulations you want, at least at the highest levels. At the lower levels you can also break any regulations you want, as long as Congress and the courts don’t intervene, which takes years to resolve. And when you get caught, the punishment is usually firm condemnation from the media for three days.
Government is broken. I agree that someone that hates government can’t fix it, but those that believe in government yet refuse to acknowledge the problem won’t fix it either. Democrats are usually happy to complain about broken government when Republicans are in office, but not all of them take the job of fixing it seriously. Barack Obama, for all his talk about reform, plowed ahead with a new health care plan without reforming the government’s obsolete IT procurement procedures. It’s the details like that that a good CEO would have recognized immediately and a career legislator with grand dreams would overlook.
By contrast, BIll Clinton made fixing the government his top priority in the early days and appointed his VP to the task.
Are you insane? Being president means having to please everybody, most importantly a significant chunk of Congress but also the public, the media and an assortment of international stakeholders. And “near-infinite resources” is likewise a ludicrous assertion given the focus on the deficit and national debt. Your description of being president only applies if you live in a banana republic.
Well, it’s pretty likely that he DID vote for Mitt Romney, so . . . probably?
I think that pretty much covers how he feels about government in general.
Yep. The president in a Libertarian USA would spend his time not signing laws, not overseeing tax collecting, and definitely not doing anything to usurp the rights of the states to be little independent fiefdoms. All he’d have to do is green light and paying for the private military contacted out to protect our borders.
He forgets we are not a Libertarian country, of course, never have been and never will be. He forgets that a lot actually.
Well, the states are sovereign. Last I checked we still lived in a federal republic, much to the chagrin of liberals with Big Ideas. It’ll take some pretty serious court packing and possibly some civil conflict to change that.
If you or WillFarnaby wish to start a thread about whether the POTUS is a higher stress job than dog catcher or that we tried to give states a lot of power but the Articles Of The confederation failed or anything else not germane to Carly Fiorina’s run for the highest office in the land, I recommend you do so.
Until then, it would be nice if this thread didn’t get hijacked and I am extremely sorry I contributed to that hijacking.