# Carly Fiorina: John McCain and Sarah Palin aren't qualified to run a corporation **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 16, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875 "2008-09-16T19:24:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/61 "2008-09-17T04:43:57Z")
I have no opinion on Carly Fiorina as a CEO, but I would like to point out, in relation to some of the comments above, that HP already had a long-successful PC division before they merged with Compaq. The current success of their PC business is not necessarily an automatic result of merging with Compaq. ---
**Author:** ![ushimitsudoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9a140/32.png) [@ushimitsudoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ushimitsudoki)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/62 "2008-09-17T10:27:13Z")
> [@LonghornDave](#): > > I would not agree that it has “bit HP in the butt”. It was certainly controversial, but I think it has worked out in the end. HP is the world’s largest PC seller and their shares are trading near a 5 year high. Heh. I love this. “[HP] stock declined 50 percent during the five and a half years she was in charge.” - [New York Times](http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/business/14nocera.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) Small wonder now that she is out the shares are trading near a 5 year high. It “worked out” because **other people** were able to come in and salvage the mess. Carly Fiorina was a failure as a CEO by any imaginable measure. ---
**Author:** ![LonghornDave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@LonghornDave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonghornDave)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/63 "2008-09-17T15:36:41Z")
> [@ushimitsudoki](#): > > Heh. I love this. > > “[HP] stock declined 50 percent during the five and a half years she was in charge.” - [New York Times](http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/business/14nocera.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) > > Small wonder now that she is out the shares are trading near a 5 year high. It “worked out” because **other people** were able to come in and salvage the mess. > > Carly Fiorina was a failure as a CEO by any imaginable measure. You’re sort of forgetting the fact that early in her tenure the tech bubble burst. Also, the company’s shares took another hit at 9/11/01. They bottomed out around a year after that and then nearly doubled from then to the time she was replaced. Finally, my whole argument is that her biggest move, which she was most critized for, has ended up working out all right. I think that their success, particularly in the PC business since she left has somewhat vindicated her decision. ---
**Author:** ![Merkwurdigliebe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/64 "2008-09-17T15:57:15Z")
Wouldn’t that make Carly Fiorina a bit of a… Maverick? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/65 "2008-09-17T16:06:25Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Actually, that appears to be exactly the point she attempted to make in (what I presume was) her second interview when I heard it. She made a point of claiming that the skill set necessary to run a corporation was not the same skill set necessary to run a government and that, in her opinion, none of the four candidates had the experience/qualifications to run a company, but that did not preclude them from running the country. > > This foofaraw is **so** trivial and meaningless. I don’t know if it got covered elsewhere, but here in the Valley I heard news reports that she was high in the list of VP candidates - which I suspect was planted by her people. It seems likely to me that this comment was coming from her being mad at not being picked and that the woman who was picked was such an unqualified person. (It wouldn’t surprise me if HP’s budget was bigger than Alaska’s). Know her, this isn’t surprising. On the other hand, it does show how McCain seems to have a problem managing his advisers. Very amateurish. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/66 "2008-09-17T16:14:21Z")
> [@LonghornDave](#): > > This is just ludicrous. She didn’t want to make products? Is that why her most notable achievement was merging with Compaq? You do know that the PC segment earns far more money for HP than the printer segment, right? > Also, your dad must really hate the EDS acquisition since that is essentially a service company. I guess the people that have followed Fiorina must really be incompetent to go forward with that transaction, huh? However, the margin of the printer business is 4X higher than the PC division (at least last year.) [Cite](http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/20/technology/hp_earnings/index.htm). As far as services, increasing services with much better margin over products is something that most computer companies are trying to do. IBM makes lots on this. I’m sure that the comment on totally getting rid of product was hyerbole, but IBM sold its PC business and closed its fab. It’s not the HP Way, for sure, but she might have said it. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875/67 "2008-09-17T16:35:30Z")
> [@LonghornDave](#): > > No, I’m not attacking you at all. I did not make it clear because I quoted too much of your post. I am calling the statement from your dad that she wanted to stop making products and exclusively sell customer service ludicrous. If she wanted to stop making products, then why would her signature move as CEO be the merger with a company that manufactures products? Further, this company (Compaq) not only manufactures products, but does so on a scale larger than the HP does with their printing segment. It is an absurd statement. Carly ran HP for five years. My dad (as should be deducable) did not last all 5 as a regular employee. (He was randomly fired, and then covertly re-hired against all regulation because his project could not be finished without him. Yaaay, Carly!) The ‘service company’ plan she had was from early in her career mismanaging HP - before the merger was a twinkle in Carly’s eye. Your entire speculation is based on the assumption that Carly’s plans and motives could not change at any point over the course of _five years_. Who’s making absurd statements, again? > [@LonghornDave](#): > > Your information is your dad’s ill-informed opinion. I am not speculating; I am stating facts which make your dad’s opinion illogical. > > Finally, I mentioned the EDS acquisition as my speculation (now I do it) is that your dad thought Fiorina was particularly bad as HP’s CEO because she was moving away from manufacturing and more towards service. If he thought that about someone who dramatically increased their manufacturing (Fiorina),he must really think the current CEO (Hurd) is incompetent at running the company. My dad _worked_ there under her. How informed are you? My dad thought that Carly was particularly bad as HP’s CEO because she was _destroying it_. Before she started acquiring and merging she was terrorizing and gutting. This may not be as obvious to outsiders in retrospect since more headlineable and rememberable events came to pass later, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t _do_ the things she did earlier in her career. Now, this is all a sort of a hijack to the topic of the OP, unless you’re trying to determine whether this clearly makes Carly unqualified to comment on what it takes to run a company. Personally, I think it sort of does; however, I think she’s probably still right, perhaps due to a stopped-watch sort of effect. While politics _does_ seem to be a more similar career to business than, say, car washing is, there are still probably enough differences that your average politician would founder for a while in the CEO position. Unless the question is whether the politicians could run a company as large as HP _as well as Carly did_. In which case the bar seems low enough that even Palin could probably decide to buck popularity and advice and abitrarily seek a merger that wasn’t _quite_ so bad that a skilled successor couldn’t salvage it. > [@LonghornDave](#): > > Yes, my harebrained ideology is that I don’t think someone should be criticized for doing the polar opposite of what they are being criticized for. Sometimes over enough time people will both do something _and_ its ‘polar opposite’. Before assuming something didn’t happen, check about it, not the later events. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carly-fiorina-john-mccain-and-sarah-palin-arent-qualified-to-run-a-corporation/463875.md?page=3)