If Carly Fiorina gains any traction from her barbed attacks on Hillary Clinton, the rightwing cartoons will practically draw themselves: Carly and Hillary in a teeth-baring cat fight, Carly’s claws like a tiger’s, HRC’s eyes as red as a Demon Sheep’s, their hair seriously mussed, and Benghazi burning in the background.
As one man tweeted, “Let the Cat Fight begin!! Fiorina will tear Hillary to shreds.”
“Fiorina vs Hillary in 2016,” someone else raved. Why? “Because men love a cat fight.”
It is indeed a male dream, especially males who are Republican presidential candidates (and who isn’t?). If Carly handles the edgy, personal attacks on Hillary, they figure, we won’t get Rick Lazio-ed off the stage.
But at the press conference-ambush that Fiorina held outside a South Carolina hotel where Clinton was speaking, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO bristled at suggestions that she was doing the male Republicans’ dirty work. Fiorina, Maggie Haberman wrote,
quickly grew discomfited when the questions seemed to treat her more as a heckler pulling a stunt than as a formidable candidate making an otherwise significant campaign stop.
One reporter asked if Ms. Fiorina was being used by the men in the Republican field to harass Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Fiorina insisted she had planned her trip here “many, many weeks ago, so perhaps she’s following me.”
The first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company has had to deny that she’s a tool of the GOP boys—the poisoned-tip of their spear—for a while now. “The party is not leaning on me to do anything, and I didn’t ask the party’s permission,” she said in March.
She’s her own woman, independent, thinks for herself. But in her self-appointed role as Hillary’s foil, there’s a fascinating tension between the politics of cat-fighting and her feminist-tinged complaints about just those sort of stereotypes. “I think the media hold women to different standards,” she said at the same press conference. “[The press] scrutinizes women differently, criticizes women different, caricatures women differently.”
But even as Fiorina wants everyone to know that’s she’s more than Hillary’s would-be bête noir (“the vast majority of my speeches in front of anyone are about a host of issues,” she told reporters), in many ways she is also Hillary’s doppelganger. They have much in common:
1) Most obviously, both are women vying for power in a man’s world. They are considered “demographically symbolic” (as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre sneered about Obama’s entire presidency), and they each have a deck of “gender cards” to draw from. It’s perfectly legit, since women have been largely banned from the card games. But while Hillary is playing pinochle, Fiorina is playing something closer to three-card monte. As Amanda Marcotte writes:
In recent months, Fiorina has shown that the only thing she loves more than deriding those who play the “gender card” is playing the gender card….
“If Hillary Clinton were to face a female nominee, there are a whole set of things that she won’t be able to talk about,” Fiorina told reporters in April. “She won’t be able to talk about being the first woman president. She won’t be able to talk about a war on women without being challenged. She won’t be able to play the gender card.” No she won’t, because I, Carly Fiorina, will play it for her!
2) They are so much alike that Fiorina claims Hillary stole the title of her recent memoir, “Hard Choices,” from Fiorina’s account of her widely criticized tenure at HP, “Tough Choices,” which was published in 2006.
“And last month,” Amy Chozick writes, “after Mrs. Clinton urged 5,000 female tech professionals in Silicon Valley to ‘unlock our full potential,’ Ms. Fiorina again accused Mrs. Clinton of stealing: Her leadership political action committee, an aide to Ms. Fiorina noted, is called the Unlocking Potential Project.”
3) That could be a case of bad-faith borrowing, or it could all be a coincidence. As Jason Linkins points out, “’unlock your potential’ may actually be the most banal phrase these Thought Leader types employ.” Fiorina seems to think she owns this sort of MEGO boilerplate because she comes from big biz, but the truth is that both women are corporatist, business-friendly politicians, supported by industry and Wall Street.
4) Both women have worked very hard to please powerful peers who are almost without exception white males—at HP, Fiorina laid off more than 30,000 people (see CarlyFiorina.org); and Hillary voted for the Iraq War as she was preparing to run in 2008.
Fiorina has to be aggressive, of course, because she’s the newbie—never won an election, while Clinton was a two-term senator from New York, not to mention Secretary of State. But one interesting difference between the two is that Hillary has refrained from attacking other women politicians—even, in 2008, Sarah Palin. “You know, I don’t want to be the chick police,” says Nicole Wallace, who famously quit the Palin campaign, but Fiorina’s focus on Hillary, she says, “runs the risk of having it look personal.”
It wouldn’t be Fiorina’s first foray into the too-personal: when she thought she was off mic during her 2010 race against California senator Barbara Boxer, Fiorina said she had seen her opponent on TV and wondered, “God, what is that hair? So yesterday.”
Naturally, the Democratic Clinton and the Republican Fiorina differ on issue after issue—immigration reform, abortion, equal pay, foreign policy. But let me acknowledge that in writing about these two women, I have, like so much of the media, completely stayed away from any mention of any issue.
Because… CAT FIGHT!
By: Leslie Savan, The Nation, May 29, 2015
May 30, 2015
Posted by raemd95 |
Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton, Media | Barbara Boxer, Gender Discrimination, GOP Presidential Candidates, Hewlett Packard, Press, Republicans, White Males |
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For reasons that remain unclear, Carly Fiorina is running for president. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO and failed Senate candidate has been teasing a potential run for months now, but this morning she made it official and launched her new official campaign website (which drew almost as much attention as her unofficial campaign website). If you peruse the official site in search of a coherent rationale for why we need a Fiorina presidency, you’ll be left sorely disappointed.
Fiorina’s argument for why she should be president seems to be that she’s not Hillary Clinton. She posted a short video that ostensibly explains why she’s running, and the first image you see is the back of Fiorina’s head as she watches Hillary’s announcement video. (Fiorina clicks off the Hillary video with the remote because SYMBOLISM.) From there she launches into an awkward monologue about how politicians shouldn’t run for political office because that’s not what the American Revolution was about. “Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class,” she says. So vote Fiorina, because that’s what the professional political class that founded the country would want.
But Fiorina’s not arguing for herself here; she’s arguing against “politicians.” And the only reason she can make this argument is that her one attempt at becoming part of the “professional political class” ended with a lopsided defeat in a year when other Republicans across the country surged to victory on an anti-Obama wave. This “I’m not a politician” schtick was the same message Fiorina deployed against “professional politician” Barbara Boxer in 2010, and she lost by 10 points. Carly Fiorina’s not a “politician,” but only because she’s bad at politics. Indeed, if she’s saying that America should flock to someone who’s untainted by politics, then why should they back Fiorina over, say, Ben Carson? He’s making the same “I’m not a politician” pitch, but unlike Fiorina, he doesn’t bear the taint of having previously run for office.
Anyway, for her 2016 run, Fiorina says she’ll put an end to “the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the egos, [and] the corruption,” which is amusing and also hypocritical. No more sound bites, vitriol, and pettiness sure sounds nice until you remember that much of Fiorina’s 2010 campaign was all about painting Barbara Boxer as an out-of-control egotist. They even produced an extremely weird “movie” that depicted Boxer’s “big head” as a grotesque floating blimp that traveled the country inflicting “sound bites” on the masses. No pettiness or vitriol there! After all, Fiorina’s not a politician.
As for ending “corruption,” well, who could be against that? Under the Fiorina regime, there will be no more hand-outs for the privileged and no more payouts for people who don’t do the job that’s expected of them. On a related note, Carly Fiorina received $21 million (plus $19 million in stock options) for being fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2005.
Speaking of that Hewlett-Packard experience, running on her tenure as CEO did her little good in 2010, mainly because everyone kept pointing out how many jobs were lost under reign (some 30,000 layoffs) and all the enthusiastic outsourcing she presided over. But she’s going back to the same well for 2016 and offering a highly sanitized retelling of her stewardship of the company. “Carly didn’t always make the most popular decisions at HP,” her website boasts, “but, time and time again, they would prove to be the right ones.” And there’s even a little backbiting at the Hewlett-Packard board for forcing her out:
But even though her record as CEO speaks for itself, Carly faced headwinds from people who did not want to see HP change. They wanted to double-down on a flawed agenda that simply wasn’t sustainable against the new challenges of the 21st Century.
Yes, you can certainly tell that Carly Fiorina hates sound bites and isn’t a “professional politician” – only real, authentic people use phrases like “double-down on a flawed agenda” and “new challenges of the 21st Century [capitalized for some reason].” Fiorina’s list of accomplishments as HP CEO include “doubled revenues” and the fact that they were cranking out “11 patents a day.” She’s clearly hoping that people will confuse “good for a giant tech company’s bottom line” with “good for America.”
So at this moment, there is no real justification for why Carly Fiorina is running for president. At the very least, though, she’s carving out a unique space for herself. While other candidates are scrambling to show off their populist cred and fake concern over income inequality, Fiorina is embracing her legacy as a failed tech CEO gliding along on a golden parachute.
By: Simon Maloy, Salon, May 4, 2015
May 6, 2015
Posted by raemd95 |
Carly Fiorina, GOP Presidential Candidates, Politicians | Barbara Boxer, Ben Carson, Golden Parachutes, Hewlett Packard, Hillary Clinton, Jobs |
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Yesterday, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that the chances that she’ll run for president are “higher than 90 percent.” And what will Fiorina be offering? Why, hard-nosed business sense, of course! Her political experience may begin and end with one failed run for Senate, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t ready for the job. Let’s see her answer to the inevitable question of why she’s qualified to be president:
Because I have a deep understanding of how the economy actually works, having started as a secretary and become the chief executive of the largest technology company in the world, because I understand how the world works and know many of the world leaders on the stage today, because I understand technology, a transformational tool, because I understand bureaucracies—how they work and how you need to change them and our government is a huge bureaucracy, and because I understand executive decision-making, which is making tough calls in tough times with high stakes for which you’re prepared to be held accountable.
So she knows that decision-making is about making tough calls! And does the substance of those calls matter? Nah. If someone who had success in a field unrelated to business—let’s say a great trial lawyer—said to a corporate board, “Hire me to be your CEO, even though I’ve never worked in business, because I know how to make tough decisions, and that’s what business is about, right?” they’d be laughed out of the room. That’s not even to address Fiorina’s stormy tenure at HP, which wouldn’t put her on anyone’s list of highly successful chief executives.
But there are a couple of other things about this interview I want to point out:
Well, I think we have two fundamental structural problems in our economy. One is that we have tangled people up in a web of dependence from which they can’t escape. We’re leaving lots of talent on the field. Secondly, we’re crushing small businesses now. Elizabeth Warren is right, crony capitalism is alive and well. Big business and big government go hand in hand. But for the first time in U.S. history now, we are destroying more businesses than we are creating.
So the biggest problem with the economy is the “web of dependence” we’ve trapped people in. Americans are a bunch of slackers cashing their government benefits, and if we could just cut those benefits and get them off their lazy duffs, then the economy would be supercharged. OK.
And what is this about “For the first time in U.S. history now, we are destroying more businesses than we are creating”? I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the economy constantly creates and then destroys businesses. You may have heard that idea that 90 percent of businesses fail in their first year; turns out that isn’t actually true, but the majority of businesses don’t last more than five years. Create, destroy, create, destroy—that’s how capitalism works.
And I love her attempt at Republican populism: “Crony capitalism is alive and well. Big business and big government go hand in hand.” And if you think that’s a problem, the person to solve it is the one whose sole quasi-qualification is having been CEO of a huge corporation.
But the best part of the interview is this, where Fiorina drills down to the problem that’s really holding our economy back:
So, if we want mainstream and the middle class going and growing again, we’ve got to get small and family-owned businesses going and growing again. Washington, D.C., has become a vast unaccountable bureaucracy. It’s been growing for 40 years. We have no idea how our money is spent.
I think there are two things that would help tremendously. One, zero base budgeting, so we know where the money is spent. We’re talking about the whole budget and not just the rate of increase.
And two, pay for performance in our civil service. We have—how many inspector general reports do we need to read that say, you know, you can watch porn all day and get paid exactly the same way as somebody who is trying to do their job?
There you have it. If we could only get federal employees to stop watching porn, we could really get this economy going.
I’ve got some shocking news for Ms. Fiorina. You know those tens of thousands of people who worked for you at HP? Plenty of them were watching porn, too. It isn’t just something that federal employees do.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 30, 2015
March 31, 2015
Posted by raemd95 |
Carly Fiorina, CEO'S, GOP Presidential Candidates | Businesses, Capitalism, Corporations, Economy, Hewlett Packard, Politics |
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With her boffo appearance at CPAC, it became obvious why Carly Fiorina masquerades as a presidential candidate: She loves the attention! According to National Review, her CPAC remarks scored a hit, if only because she trashed Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State. Fiorina certainly proved her cred as a Fox News Republican. She eagerly parroted familiar talking points about Clinton – “Name an accomplishment!” – and accused Clinton of saying, “What difference does it make?” in response to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Such craven willingness to lie for a cheap cheer at CPAC is all they – or we – need to know about Fiorina.
“Name an Accomplishment” is a game that everyone can play, however, and I daresay that Hillary Clinton and her avid defense team have plenty of answers. As for Fiorina, she came close to wrecking Hewlett-Packard, a major U.S. technology firm whose owners and shareholders hope never to see her face again. Many of her former colleagues there consider her utterly without qualifications for any role in government, no matter how small. (They make her sound like a pretty awful person, too.) Beyond her dubious résumé, Fiorina’s most memorable achievement was the moronic “Demon Sheep ad,” nominated by NPR’s Ken Rudin as “the worst political ad ever” – aired with her approval, of course.
Few former secretaries of state can actually point to a single, world-historical achievement distinguishing their tenure. Clinton went far, and not just literally, toward restoring American prestige and alliances after the nadir of the Bush administration.
As for Bush’s secretaries of state, both share responsibility for bringing this country to a very low point: Colin Powell with his infamous UN speech on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” a decision that he has since disowned; and Condoleezza Rice, with her “mushroom cloud” fakery and a long series of lies on the same topic. Hundreds of thousands dead, still more grievously wounded and left homeless, trillions of dollars squandered, and a violent Islamist movement rising from the ruins: Now there’s a whole series of accomplishments! Neither Powell nor Rice is likely to be remembered for much else.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, February 27, 2015
February 28, 2015
Posted by raemd95 |
CPAC, Foreign Policy, GOP Presidential Candidates | Benghazi, Carly Fiorina, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Fox News, Hewlett Packard, Hilary Clinton, Republicans |
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It’s apparently not enough for Mitt Romney that he’s holding a Vegas fundraising event tonight featuring Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump, just as the latter political werewolf is reviving his birtherist act.
Next up, in California, Romney’s doing a high-dollar event with everyone’s favorite failed political robot and job destroyer: yes, Meg Whitman! In case you (like me) have tried very hard not to think about eMeg since the last of her mind-numbing, soul-deadening 2010 gubernatorial campaign ads faded from the air, she’s been back in the news as the CEO of HP, doing what she does best: laying off employees. Here’s an assessment of her brief but destructive tenure at HP by SiliconBeat’s Chris O’Brien:
Listening to the Hewlett Packard earnings call was an exercise in the surreal today. CEO Meg Whitman started the call with a cheerful anecdote about some really neat-o gizmo she saw at HP. Just the sorta whiz bang stuff that’s gonna get HP back on its feet in no time!
She’s never been more optimistic about HP’s future! Gonna invest more in that innovation stuff!
Then she proceeded with all sorts of other happy talk about the business stabilizing and yada, yada, yada. And oh, by the way, to realign costs with the business we’re going to throw 27,000 people out the window.
[T]his has to be a crushing blow to an employee base already intensely demoralized by non-stop job cuts over the past decade. HP is not so much a company as it is a patchwork of acquired pieces of technology and companies, a kind of Frankstein monster of the high-tech industry.
Meg Whitman is to the technology industry what Mitt Romney is to private equity: an American Beauty Rose of “best management practices” that add up to a lot of misery and dysfunction. Romney could do a lot for the clarity of his economic message by just putting Meg on the ticket with him. Aside from all the many things they have in common, together they could pretty much self-fund the whole campaign if they wished. (Oh, yeah, sorry, forgot that Whitman can’t be on a national ticket because she is not, last time I checked, anti-choice!).
Newt, Trump, Whitman, on back-to-back days, just as Romney is officially nailing down the GOP presidential nomination. It has to be a nightmare for Romney’s staff. Don’t be surprised if they throw a few random punches to distract attention from the company their candidate is keeping.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 29, 2012
May 30, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Election 2012 | Birthers, Donald Trump, Hewlett Packard, Jobs, Meg Whitman, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Politics |
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