Carly Fiorina

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[[File:Carly_Fiorina.jpg|thumb|Fiorina in San Paulo, Brazil, August 2, 2004]]
'''Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina''' {{lived|1954}} used to be an incompetent CEO for Hewlett-Packard,<ref>Paul R. La Monica.  "[http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/ Fiorina out, HP stock soars]."  ''CNNMoney''.  2005 February 10.</ref> but has since been expelled from that line of work. During her tenure, she destroyed the long-term technology-minded culture at HP, partly by sadistic layoff rounds, partly by merging HP with a cheap computer junk manufacturer and holding the latter as an example for the engineers of the former.<ref>[https://fortune.com/article/why-carlys-big-bet-is-failing-fortune-classics-2005/ "Why Carly's Big Bet is Failing,"] ''Fortune'' magazine, February, 2005</ref> There are service manuals on the websites that aren't made of lies and the service on the servers is about as good as Dell's or Sun's (pre-Oracle).<ref group=note>That said, anyone who administers the damn things is enormously pleased that the Compaq line of PCs utterly replaced the HP lines, which were even worse. It appears some DEC engineers had influence on making the Compaq PCs not suck too badly.</ref> As part of her strategy to destroy (or "reorient") HP she split off the measurement part now known as Agilent. When she was fired the old guard celebrated by bringing champagne to work.

She then decided to become a demagogue for the [[Republican Party]]. She ran for the Republican nomination for the 2010 [[Senate]] race against incumbent [[Democrat]] Barbara Boxer (she lost).<ref>Seema Mehta.  "[http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/05/local/me-fiorina5 Carly Fiorina enters GOP Senate primary with opening shots against Barbara Boxer]."  ''Los Angeles Times''.  2009 November 5.</ref> Previously she had taken her skills at failing at business to the campaign trail for [[John McCain]] in the months before the [[2008 U.S. Presidential Election]], and much like her stint at HP, didn't last long. During an [[MSNBC]] interview she admitted that she thought that [[Sarah Palin]] was unfit to run a major corporation, and then inexplicably decided to say that McCain was also incapable.<ref>Daniel Nasaw.  "[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2008/sep/16/johnmccain Carly Fiorina: McCain couldn't run a major corporation either]."  Deadline USA blog.  ''The Guardian''.  2008 September 16.</ref> This would reflect badly on McCain, as the [[United States]] [[government]] is essentially a three trillion dollar corporation that also occasionally has to fight wars and put out forest fires. While this was, in fact, totally and completely true, this disagreed with the talking points she was supposed to be pushing—such as "[[Barack Obama]] is a [[socialist]]" and "[[Newspeak|We have always been at war with Eastasia]]."

Moreover, it is disturbing to see people, such as Fiorina, held in such high esteem, because luck happens to place them in prominent public or corporate positions, characterize government as a corporation. Even more galling is the idea that success in business translates into being a successful politician or political leader – Fiorina falls into this category.

First, government is not and cannot be a corporation. Yes, it is a large organization, much like a corporation.  And, yes, because both are large organizations there are some management principles, particularly at the personnel level, that may be applied to both to achieve efficiency. But, the commonality ends there; the purpose of government is fundamentally different from the purpose of a corporation. 
 
A corporation’s sole purpose is to create profit. To achieve that end near dictatorial powers are vested in the CEO with a council of elders (the board of directors) serving as some balance to that power. So for the most part, the leader of a corporation does not have to contend with any type of counterbalance of authority in terms of dictating the direction of the corporation – other than the marketplace. 
 
A democratic government, by contrast, operates within the confines of competing branches, parties, and the necessity of electoral participation, which occurs, at a minimum every two years.  These competing interests were intentionally set up by our founding fathers to counteract creating dictatorial control. Moreover, and most obvious, government is not in the business of making a profit, indeed, it must take on obligations  the private sector will not do because there is no profit, or for the private sector to perform such services the cost to society would be prohibitive. 
 
So for someone like Fiorina to imply that neither Sarah Palin nor John McCain is fit to run a major corporation is to miss the point. Just as Fiorina suggests these two politicians are unfit to run a corporation, they could equally say she is unfit to be a chief executive in government – after all she failed operating within the much smaller pseudo-democratic environment of a board of directors at Hewlett-Packard.

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[[Category:2016 US Presidential candidates]]
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Categories: 2016 US Presidential candidates, Business, Living people, Texas