McCain campaign might want to look into some better surrogates:
“Do you think [Sarah Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?” asked the host.
“No, I don’t,” responded Fiorina. “But you know what? That’s not what she’s running for.”
Audio here:
September 16th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
How would Carly Fiorina know what it takes to run a major company like Hewlett Packard?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Matt, would any board of directors in the world put Barry in charge of their company? Would Radio Shack hire him to run a mall store?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Wow. I’ve generally found Fiorina fairly effective on the stump. That was just a stupid answer, politically speaking (if valid on its face), because Palin does in fact run a “company” roughly the size of F500/F1000 company, no?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Carly thinks it’s easier to run the free world than to run HP.
Her biggest decision at HP was buying Compaq. Is a single person reading this blog using a Compaq? How about a desktop HP?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Matt, would any board of directors in the world put Barry in charge of their company?
Given his superior academic credentials, his obvious intelligence, his first rate personal character and his massive success in running a highly complex, billion dollar campaign organization, I’d say there are likely many large firms who would eagerly put Senator Obama in charge.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Yes. But it’s my company’s, not mine.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
How would Carly Fiorina know what it takes to run a major company like Hewlett Packard?
So true. Not to mention she got one of those fancy “golden parachutes” I keep hearing so much about. Drive the company into the ground, get paid millions for it, then up as a surrogate for a Presidential candidate. Not bad work if you can get it.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Re E. O’Neal
Given the incompetence demonstrated by the CEOs of Fannie Mea, Fannie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, AIG, etc., Senator Obama could hardly do worse.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Asking Carly Fiorina for advice on how to run a company is like asking Mohammed Atta for advice on landing a plane…
September 16th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Matt, would any board of directors in the world put Barry in charge of their company?
Riiiiight, because ex-editors of the Harvard Law Review never end up in positions of power in corporate America. And Senators are always scrounging for work when they leave the public sector. And Con Law professors at University of Chicago are dime-a-dozen and known idiots to boot.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Is there anyone, anyone at all, who doesn’t fail upward anymore once he or she is stuck in a high enough position?
I guess once you get admission to some level of the club, it doesn’t matter what you do or what damage you cause. You’re now a club member, so, you know, whatever.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Asking Carly Fiorina for advice on how to run a company is like asking Mohammed Atta for advice on landing a plane…
Classic.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Jasper, maybe a motivational speakers bureau would make Obama CEO. Their motto could be “Yes We Can!” This would appeal to the immature, at least for a few months.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
The phrase “bucket of warm piss” should long since have been part of this discussion.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
C.S., I haven’t noticed a pattern of Con Law lecturers (not professors) being appointed CEO, but maybe I haven’t been reading my WSJ closely enough.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I guess once you get admission to some level of the club, it doesn’t matter what you do or what damage you cause. You’re now a club member, so, you know, whatever.
In football, it’s called the Dave Wanstead Principle. Once you’re a head coach, it’s very tough to not get work, even if you drive every program you’re associated with into the ground. See also: Turner, Norv.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
“Asking Carly Fiorina for advice on how to run a company is like asking Mohammed Atta for advice on landing a plane…”
Silver wins the thread.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Jasper, maybe a motivational speakers bureau would make Obama CEO. Their motto could be “Yes We Can!” This would appeal to the immature, at least for a few months.
Ed O’Neil: Riiiiight, because ex-editors of the Harvard Law Review never end up in positions of power in corporate America. And Senators are always scrounging for work when they leave the public sector. And Con Law professors at University of Chicago are dime-a-dozen and known idiots to boot.
my apologies to C.S. (-:
And, better trolls please.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Palin isn’t asking to run a company. She’s asking to run the country. Apples and oranges. There’s no consequences to screwing up the country. As long as you give the rich more tax breaks, there’s nothing you can do to harm anything since “harm” is defined to mean “not giving the rich more tax breaks”.
As we’ve seen, chimps have the capacity to run the country.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I’d say there are likely many large firms who would eagerly put Senator Obama in charge.
Not exactly. Although I don’t doubt that he’s capable of understand them, I have a hard time believing that Obama could run Dell Computers or Wendy’s or anything else like that.
The faulty logic here is that running a government or another non-profit institution isn’t anything like running a company that produces and sells things. Fiorina got this one right. You wouldn’t take the head of Big Brothers/Big Sisters and expect them to run Texas Instruments. It’s a totally different skill set.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I haven’t noticed a pattern of Con Law lecturers (not professors)
FYI:
Because you’re obviously highly concerned with semantic accuracy.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Fiorina is right, though it’s obviously a politically stupid thing to say.
But it seems like people here are imagining that there’s just this single scale of ability, which we’ll call “competence,” and, like, you need relatively little to be a Radio Shack employee, more to be a middle manager, more to be an executive, and the most to be the President.
That’s stupid.
There are tons of different skills, not a single catch all rating of competence. Plenty of skills which you’d want for a business executive aren’t particularly relevant for the VP — and vice versa.
That said, Fiorina didn’t handle the question well, by leaving the frame as though there were a single big slider of competence.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
‘E’ is Al’s meth-addled cousin. Smarter fucking trolls, please!
C’mon, admit it: you wanted Steve fucking Forbes to run again.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Andrea Mitchell just asked Carly about this. Carly said that none of the candidates are qualified to run a major company.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Mark F, there’s no glory in winning a battle of wits with … an invertebrate. The conservative chatechism gets dumber every day.
.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
It would be stupid for the Obama campaign or Obama supporters to go, “SEE! Palin is inexperienced!” which will just draw comparisons to Obama. Better to relentlessly attack Fiorina, and point out her own golden parachute, and her horrible mishandling of HP when she was CEO. Obama campaign surrogates should attack the record and character of Fiorina, and they should do it relentlessly, and ask why McCain would ever have something like that representing his campaign. I hope that’s the story that comes out of this.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
For what it is worth, this seems like a personally reasonable response to the question, and in isolation I’d have no problem with it.
But of course it is notable to the extent it reveals what an honest answer to the question “Does Sarah Palin have the experience to be President” would look like, and yet of course by choosing her as the VP candidate and hence potential President, they can’t really admit that.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Wasn’t it a big deal not too long ago that Bush was an MBA and would govern as the “CEO President”?
Of course, looking at things now, he pretty much did.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Carly said that none of the candidates are qualified to run a major company.
And she’s probably right. The skill set required to be President is very different from that required to be a CEO.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
“How would Carly Fiorina know what it takes to run a major company like Hewlett Packard?”
Hey, not everyone has the talent to get the share price of a company to drop by 60% over their tenure, and then get a $21 million package from the HP board to walk away before you do more damage.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
# miatch Says:
September 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Is a single person reading this blog using a Compaq? How about a desktop HP?
********************
I think Matt’s site is only accessible from Macs.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
As editor of the Harvard Law Review, Obama, had he chosen an academic career, which would have involved doing research and publishing it, could easily have gotten a tenure track position at a leading University and achieved full professorship. But that would have required devoting his full time to an academic career, which is not the route he wanted to take.
Alternatively if he had taken a postion with a prestigous law firm, which he easily could have obtained, he would by now hold a high position in management and be well on the way to being a CEO.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I think I just heard HP was having a layoff.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
And likewise with Democratic campaign consultants. See: Penn, Mark, and Shrum, Bob.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
The wiretapping your board members part she’d be pretty good at, though.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
First of all, Craig, it’s Dave “bow down before my ’stache” WannstEDT, and thanks for reminding us Pitt football fans that we have the single most inept coach in all of football.
Speaking of inept leaders, The Stache and Carly would make a good couple.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I didn’t say that Obama couldn’t have made tenured Professor at the Univ. of Chicago law school, if he had tried. However, he would have had to publish something. My parenthetical point was that despite the cleverly worded, face-saving announcement from the law school, he was not, in fact, a professor. Hell, everybody who teaches in a law school is called “professor”, just as every cop is called “officer”.
I’m not like Matt. I’m not calling Barry a liar for representing himself as a “professor”.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Guilty…desktop Compaq as we speak. What can I say, they’re practically giving them away.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Let me be on record (again) as stating that if Palin were to have 2x or 5x or 30x the ‘experience’ she currently has, she would still be a deranged right wing nutball who needs to be kept out of power.
That’s my problem with the ‘experience’ argument.
Like what this country needs is another FourthBranch Cheney, just with more apocalyptic fundamentalist nuttery.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
It’s a completely different skill set, in many respects, to run a large corporation. But anyone who watched Fiorina’s speech at the RNC for more than five minutes should be a candidate for water-boarding resistance—-she is a totally unskilled speaker as she was totally over her head at HP.
Of course, she tried to qualify her abrupt “no,” but she isn’t as smart as Palin, who dodged Gibson’s gotcha questions with enough skill to get a gentlewoman’s C.
Fiorina probably talked herself out of a minor cabinet position with this latest booboo.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I am *not* an Obama fan, but I have some experience in HR for large public companies.
If I’m being honest, I have to admit that Obama would be viewed as a very desirable fit, particularly for a growth company.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I guess once you get admission to some level of the club, it doesn’t matter what you do or what damage you cause. You’re now a club member, so, you know, whatever.
That’s the thing about Fiorina nowadays - she hasn’t had a job since he got fired from HP. I mean, even Nardelli got the chance to drive another company into the ground after he decided to have mercy on Home Depot’s stockholders.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I see E. O’Neal’s point: although Obama has been a great success in law, politics, writing, and government, he has yet to prove he can drive a major corporation into the ground and pocket millions for it. Shame on you, “Barry”!
September 16th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
BHO would be good for dealing with the public, governments and other outside parties, which is a major role of many CEOs. Operationally, and probably strategically, he’d be at sea. Those things take experience and judgment.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
This exchange tells us less about what Fiorina thinks of Palin than it does about what Fiorina thinks of government.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Having seen her in person speak extemporaneously and in dialogue format back when she was at HP, Fiorina is actually a polished speaker in the CEO/corporate context, but is a fish out of water in the political arena. She was an Imperial CEO and legend in her own mind, so endless gaffes were to be expected in her McCain surrogate role (remember when she said people shouldn’t listen to surrogates?).
Kudos to GOPer from PA for pointing out Obama’s positive managerial appeal. He exhibits a temperament and analytical skills that match up with the better senior managers and CEOs I have dealt with in my career.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Shorter Fiorina:
Only I am brilliant enough to run HP, not that stupid Sarah Palin. But she’s smart enough for government work!
Fiorina really encapsulated the entire Conservative hatred for government and governing in one pithy throwaway line.
It actually really reminds me (I’m dating myself and I’m not even all that old!) of when Ross Perot used to lecture Bill Clinton in the debates.
Perot loved to point out that the state GDP of Arkansas was equivalent to that of Toys ‘r Us and was obviously completely dwarfed by Perot’s company (EDS, I think).
I’m sure HP does dwarf the state GDP of Alaska. Unfortunately, Palin is now running for Vice President of the entire United States — not just Alaska — and that’s one heckuva lot bigger than HP, Carly!
September 16th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
As if we need a failed CEO to explain to us Palin is only McCain’s cheerleader.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I guess once you get admission to some level of the club, it doesn’t matter what you do or what damage you cause. You’re now a club member, so, you know, whatever.
Who sits on corporate remuneration committees? Oh, yeah: other corporate executives. Biggest circlejerk outside of a private school for boys.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
E O’Neal: “My parenthetical point was that despite the cleverly worded, face-saving announcement from the law school, he was not, in fact, a professor. Hell, everybody who teaches in a law school is called “professor”, just as every cop is called “officer”.”
Ummm, the law school says he was considered a professor, and were not talking Regency here, we’re talking one of the most respected graduate schools in the country. He obviously isn’t what you consider a “Professor” (_upper_ case, which was not asserted here) but if the highly respected law school where he taught for years says he was a “professor” (lower case), then I don’t see how he wasn’t a “professor”, as the original poster suggested.
Or are you in charge of the terminology the U of Chicago uses to characterize it’s faculty now?
September 16th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I’m on an HP/Compaq laptop, but like mike f, it’s the company’s. We generally buy HP because they bought Compaq, who bought DEC, and our original product ran on VMS.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I don’t need no dang fancy pants university to tell me what a perfesser is! I tell them what a perfesser is!
September 16th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Whenever someone mentions Perot, I (fondly) remember his story about his dog which drove off 3 armed intruders. I love that story. First, it required one hellaciously fierce dog. (Who would own a dog like that? H. Ross Perot. A short man among men.) Second that dog had to be able to count and identify arms. And third, that dog had to be able to make a report.
Now, more than ever, we need that dog.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I don’t think Fiorina could run a major corporation.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
CaptainVideo: “if he had taken a postion with a prestigous law firm, which he easily could have obtained, he would by now hold a high position in management and be well on the way to being a CEO.
”
I think you mean that he would have become a law firm partner? Very few corporate firm lawyers become CEOs. I can think of Chuck Prince of Citigroup and David Stern of the NBA, but not many others.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
If you have any questions about Barack Obama, just spend 3 minutes with the men who served with him.
*Tweed-wearing professor*: I served with Barack Obama.
*Pipe-smoking professor*: I served with Barack Obama.
*TWP*: Barack Obama is not being honest about what happened at the University of Chicago.
*PSP*: He is lying about his record.
*TWP*: He wasn’t a professor.
*PSP*: He didn’t even have TENURE!!
*TWP*: I know Barack Obama was lying because I saw the sign next to his office. It said Senior Lecturer.
*PSP*: Barack Obama cannot be trusted.
Law School Professors for Truth is responsible for the content of this comment.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
On reading the thread I realize my creativity was the most obvious joke in the history of the world.
My apologis.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
pdq, I don’t care if BHO represents himself as a professor, though his title was Senior Lecturer. That sort of mild resume exaggeration is closer to puffery than lying. Professor in the generic sense just means teacher. I’ve heard TAs called professor.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
“That was just a stupid answer, politically speaking (if valid on its face), because Palin does in fact run a “company” roughly the size of F500/F1000 company, no?’
And from what I’ve seen, she’s done a very poor job of it.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
“no way, no how, no mccain/palin!!!”
the 1st time in my life i agree with hillary clinton.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
nbt in #55: The CEOs of both Northwest and Delta are corporate lawyers who came up through the legal department at Northwest (which admittedly doesn’t prove much except to identify two more lawyer CEOs).
September 16th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Fiorina’s since said the same thing about Obama, McCain and Bideb which rather vitiates the anti-Palin content of her message. The really relevant point (nicely made by Richard Cohen among others) is that Palin isn’t qualified to properly run ANYTHING, with the possible exception of a faith-healing group.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Edward: I did a google search for “lawyers as CEOs” and found a few more examples:
Dick Parsons of AOL/Time Warner
*Kenneth Chenault of American Express
*Sumner Redstone of Viacom
Kenneth Raines of Fannie Mae (oops, that didn’t work so well)
Michael Cherkasky of Marsh & McLennan
Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines
*Jeffrey Kindler of Pfizer
David Dillon of Kroger
Edward Rust of State Farm
*Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs
Businessweek says: “According to headhunting firm SpencerStuart, 10.8% of the CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index have law degrees.”
The names I marked with * are HLS graduates.
Interesting… But somehow I doubt Obama would have enjoyed a life in the business world.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
E. O’Neal: I’ve never heard of blog trolls sitting on corporate boards (or tenure committees for that matter), so I think I’ll take a pass on your distilled wisdom for today.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
PaulC, I do most of my blogging during board meetings and tenure committee meetings. But please don’t tell them. They think I’m listening.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
nbt, I know Sumner Redstone. Sumner Redstone is a friend of mine. Barack Obama is no Sumner Redstone. (Apologies to Lloyd Bentsen)
September 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Could Palin run the Knicks? I mean, if she isn’t qualified to run a basketball team, how can she run the country?
September 16th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
McCain was POW, that qualifies him for everything!!!!
Seriouslly, being a CEO is not all that different from being president or governor… Big corp CEO these days, don’t do stuff that is industry specific, they set broad objectives and business goals (policies), oversee VPs the keep specoific portfolios (ministers, secretaries), decide takeovers(invasions), keep the customers and shareholders happy (voters and party members), take credit for what underlings get right, blame subalters or outsiders for own failures…I could go on..
September 16th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
RonnieP: I bet Palin could do a better job with the Knicks than Isiah did.
First, she would sell Jerome James on eBay.
Next, she would impose a “fat cats tax” on courtside seats. And the investment bankers would pay it.
Next, instead of harassing Anucha, she would just order Garden security to pack up her stuff and escort her out.
Finally, when the Marbury-plus-intern-plus-truck rumors came out, Palin would order the intern to keep the baby, and arrange a shotgun marriage between Marbury and the girl, and put them on the cover of the team media guide.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
SWEEEET!!!! I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY RUINED ANOTHER THREAD BECAUSE PEOPLE STILL CONTINUE TO DEBATE MY IGNORANT, POINTLESS ARGUMENTS. MY GOAL OF DISTRACTING FROM THE REAL ISSUE AND TOPIC OF THIS THREAD, WHICH IS THAT SARAH PALIN ISN’T QUALIFIED TO RUN THE LOCAL PUTT PUTT GOLF IS, SHALL I SAY, ACCOMPLISHED!!!
WAY TO GO MEEEEEE!!!!11 JUST 2 MORE MONTHS OF POSTING DISTRACTING AND MEANINGLESS ARGUMENTS AND THEN MY WORK WILL BE DONE AND I CAN GO BACK TO BEING A TOTAL LOSER WITH NO FRIENDS…..OH IF ONLY THE ELECTION COULD BE PUT OFF…FOREVER.
I DO THINK I AM THE BEST TROLL IN ALL THE LAND.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
#70 is a fake. Detected by annoying all caps format.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Just a little FYI, but “Senior Lecturer” is also the title held by Judges Posner, Easterbrook, and Wood at Chicago.
And if you don’t know who those people are, you really shouldn’t be opining on the subject.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Yeah, I know of all three distinguished federal appellate judges. Do you suppose they puff their position at the law school into professoriates?
September 16th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
With surrogates like these who needs opposing 527s?
September 16th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
JUST 2 MORE MONTHS OF POSTING DISTRACTING AND MEANINGLESS ARGUMENTS AND THEN MY WORK WILL BE DONE AND I CAN GO BACK TO BEING A TOTAL LOSER
Pity vote for E. O’Neal winning the thread.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
E. O’Neal: When Obama talks publicly about his U.Chicago job, what do you want him to say? “I was a senior lecturer of constitutional law…” ??
September 17th, 2008 at 1:56 am
That’s what he was. But I said before it’s minor puffery to promote himself to Professor. No big deal. I just mentioned it parenthetically after someone made him sound like a legal scholar, when he’s never even published anything (excluding two autobiographies).
September 17th, 2008 at 8:06 am
I just mentioned it parenthetically after someone made him sound like a legal scholar, when he’s never even published anything (excluding two autobiographies).
First, you also managed to ruin this thread with your pointless debate. I know you are a troll so I say nice work.
Second, try to avoid making argument such as “he’s never even published anything, except for the things he’s published.” Doesn’t make you look too bright.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I’m noting that when the Law School stated the following …
… they were talking about Judges Posner, Easterbrook, and Wood just as much as they were talking about Obama. And in fact describing someone like Posner as a “distinguished federal appellate judge”, while true, misses the fact that he is also a top legal scholar.
So, there is no “puffery” in the Law School’s statement: they really do view “Senior Lecturers” as a form of professor at the Law School.
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