CARLY FIORINA RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OFFENDS ME



Regardless of her gender, Carly is still not qualified to run for president.

Being that I have lived all of my business life in Silicon Valley, and being that Hewlett-Packard was a major client of mine while working with multiple corporations, and while I lived through Carly Fiorina’s reign as the H-P CEO, I just had to write about her now being a Republican presidential candidate.

My first comment is that, I am offended by Carly Fiorina’s candidacy.

My offense is not because she is a female or a Republican, it’s that she is not qualified to run as a presidential candidate.

And by the way, I’m also offended by Dr. Ben Carson candidacy, as I was about the 2012 Pizza Man, Herman Cain, and the millionaire Donald Trump.

Being an executive in business has little if anything to do with being qualified to be the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest nation on earth.

And in Carly’s case, being bad in business is even worse, especially after losing your one bid for elective office by a full 10 points in what was a good year for Republicans.

Carly actually had a seriously failed business career and has had no political career whatsoever.  As one writer said about Carly, “It is the height of chutzpah to imagine that she is remotely qualified to be president. Or, since it’s the more likely endgame, for vice president either.”

As the H-P CEO, she still constantly talks about how the company grew.  Oh, it grew alright.  Under Fiorina’s tenure from 1999 to 2005, all the H-P growth was due to an ill-advised merger with Compaq that caused 30,000 employees to lose their jobs and that cost H-P shareholders $24 billion and bought them a computer business that diluted the value of H-P’s high-margin printer business.  “This was a big bet that didn’t pay off, that didn’t even come close to attaining what Fiorina and H-P’s board said was in store,” Carol Loomis concluded in a devastating Fortune magazine piece.  As Yahoo News had stated, “H-P stock fell by more than half during Fiorina’s tenure, while its technology cohorts performed much better.”

I always question any candidate who seeks the presidency without any government experience.  Business management demands different skills from politics and the American presidency is no place for on-the-job training.  Just look at the George W. Bush experiment.

Even if you give Carly credit for her past business experience, she has made some serious gaffes in her dealings with being a high-paid, high-tech advisor to other political candidates. 

During the 2008 presidential campaign, she was an advisor on technology to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.  In that position, Carly actual stated to the media that the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and the GOP presidential nominee himself, “weren’t fit to run a company”. 

Now, forget that what she said was probably totally true.  This was her personal customer-client and her party’s choice for running for US president.

I would say that Ms. Fiorina has another issue in her inability for making the appropriate call on when and what to say to the media.

So, there I’ve said my piece on where I fall in Ms. Fiorina’s current run for the US presidency.

Copyright G. Ater  2015