Fiorina leads Victory '08
By Erick Posted in 2008 — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Now that John McCain has clenched the GOP nomination (where is your brokered convention, Paultards?), he is working to organize a coherent infrastructure for the campaign and party apparatus. Called "Victory '08," the team he is putting in place is top notch and run with the precision of a CEO. The CEO of record being Carly Fiorina, formerly of Hewlett-Packard.
I spoke to Ms. Fiorina yesterday about her role in the campaign. Victory '08, she tells me, "is a hybrid structure to bring the RNC and campaign together." While the RNC has many roles involving many candidates, the campaign has just one role — getting John McCain elected. Ms. Fiorina and her team will make sure "we are all acting in concert" while also making sure the RNC is not so bogged down it cannot do its other task, i.e. getting Republican candidates nationwide elected.
I asked Ms. Fiorina, who has never really been politically active, why on earth she'd get involved now in this campaign. She says she met John McCain back in 2000, was struck by his grasp of business issues and how the government can help or hinder business, and "this election is extremely important" with both domestic and international issues on front burners. She says she felt compelled to get involved.
Given Ms. Fiorina's background and the wooing of Silicon Valley this year, we chatted a bit about why tech entrepreneurs should consider John McCain. First, she said "politics does actually matter to business. . . . Sillicon Valley should be focused on Senator McCain because he understands that innovation must be encouraged and it can be killed" — encouraged or killed through government action. She said Senator McCain would make the R&D tax credit permanent and would cut the corporate tax rate, which she pointed out is "the second highest in the world after Japan."
She went on to say "if you are interested in innovation and you are an innovator, you understand that there are things government can do to encourage innovation and things government can do to kill innovation." She said John McCain understands that too and, of all the candidates, is most likely to do those things to encourage innovation instead of kill it.
Carly Fiorina's goal is simple: get John McCain elected. The strategy she'll help map out is not so simple. Given her background running one of America's largest corporations and her connections on the fundraising circuit, she's no doubt the right woman for the job.
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Fiorina leads Victory '08 33 Comments (0 topical, 33 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
After having personally suffered under her leadership once, I DO NOT want to experience it again.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
I (was) with Fred!
What did she do wrong? I'm curious because I only know what I've read, and it seems like shes a smart talented leader.
her place. I think that many of her decisions as CEO were based on trying to do social engineering rather than good economic sense. Some of those choices worked out OK, but others just caused undue pain.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
I (was) with Fred!
...perspective is different from yours. I also can't specify much about my sources of information.
Some of the day-to-day management things Fiorina tried to do did frankly sound silly. Hurd is indeed much more of an operations type guy. (If I recall correctly, Fiorina's background is in marketing.)
However, she was consumed throughout her tenure by strategic issues. Gaining the trust and confidence of the employees was one thing, but after a while she lost that of her board, and that was the real battle she was fighting on a daily basis.
One of these days I'd like to commission a survey of the success rate of marketing-oriented CEOs. I suspect that the best CEOs always come out of either sales or finance, with a few great ones (like Jack Welch) coming from operations. Marketing doesn't seem to spawn great CEOs.
None of this diminishes the goodness of picking her for the McCain campaign, where strategic thinking and outreach to business people will be very valuable.
In my experience the most overpaid, unproductive, make work, self important, minimally supportive drones in a corporation. By pure law of averages you do come across someone with brains and talent, lets hope Fiorina is one of them.
Otherwise, clowns who filled their days with trivia, rarely answered an initial phone call, sealed their office off like Hitler's bunker, and tried to look busier then the snail next to them.
Just my own experience but it does seem like corporations attach undue influence to a type that runs contrary to what used to be thought of as efficiency.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
It was on a 35 year upward trend when she got hired - pushing 80. When she left, it was around 20. The stock started picking up after she left, but still isn't back where it was.
It wasn't just the company owners feeling the pain. Many jobs were lost forever. Others were moved offshore.
With the economy shaping up as issue number one, McCain is nuts to associate himself with that kind of record.
for buying our PCs.
Use to be you could buy a printer model from HP and count on it to last 10 years and for parts to be available that whole time with the after market supporting for another 5-10 after that. These days you can't even count on the same model being available for 2 years. These changes happened during her tenure.
She may have made the bean counters happy, but the techs still aren't.
Wa wondering when the issues from HP/Compaq merger would start to show.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I'm really happy about this choice, and I think a lot of other business people will be as well.
Carleton Fiorina has acquired a bad rep in the popular press, but let's be fair and point out that she took a very big risk with the acquisition of Compaq by Hewlett-Packard. You can argue about this all day (and people have ever since it happened).
But there's no one I'd rather have on our team than an individual who has the guts to take a big swing, and the gumption to follow it through.
And it's also a big confidence builder in McCain's talent-scouting and recruiting abilities. The quality of a great leader always shows through in his choice of lieutenants.
but you're dead wrong about wanting no-one more than the person who has the guts to take a big swing. Baseball analogy - I'd rather have Tony Gwynn, solid contact hitte with a great average than Rob Deer, swinging wildly for the fences, hitting .210 and striking out 150 times a season. (Although from my understanding, this analogy doesn't really work in Carly's case, because the Compaq merger was a success; it was her management style that was a failure - maybe some of the former HP employees can clarify whether thats accurate).
but it took a long time and a change in management to produce results.
As a small HPQ shareholder, I am pleased with the stock's performance, but that was a long time coming!
OTOH, after Carly left, HP gave the nation a ringside seat into a corporate soap opera better than "Dallas" - Patricia Dunn, the leaking board member, the phone interecepts, etc.
I worked for HP under Ms. Fiorina.
Here idea of a business plan was to fire the most senior engineers (since they made the most money) and offshore everything.
If you are a ChamCon (That's chamber of commerace conservative for those of you unfamiliar with my coined term) then you are going to be happy as a clam. Fiorina will surround herself with the latest and greatest minds in the field of offshoring and take us to new heights.
Saying I was in charge would be perhaps the only thing that could make me less inspired about McCain's chances.
However, if you are a FinCon, this is the team for you. Toss in your money because they are putting people together who believe in making money.
My personal dislike for Ms. Fiorina aside... she's probably a pick that makes a lot of sense for McCain. She's a successful business woman who is seen (outside HP) as a person who knows how to run a large enterprise. She's reasonably young and attractive so will have some appeal to a certain segment.
As long as McCain doesn't need the votes of HP employees (now a much diminish group), this will be good choice.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
I (was) with Fred!
Hibbert
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
I (was) with Fred!
Carleton Fiorina is a smart person but I don't think she could organize her way out of a paper bag. She can come up with the "big idea" but throughout her career she has displayed a lack of execution. Even at Lucent I think others had to "carry the water" for executing her plans.
Having said that, I think she will be good at giving a good, business-friendly face to McCain's campaign. She is very good with coming up with and promoting ideas. Indeed, I think she would have been great at HP if she could have swallowed her ego and appointed a COO to manage day-to-day operations. But if she's left to organize the execution, I think the McCain organization could have done much better.
No doubt you meant "clinched". Although "clenched" may be more apropos.
Carly Fiorina's time at HP is best described as calamitous.
Maybe she got a bad rap. I don't think so, but maybe.
Even if she did, it's leading with your chin to take someone as controversial and baggage laden as Carly Fiorina and make them your ambassador to the world.
When the party of business is scraping the C list of fired execs in need of rehabilitation for a job like this, it's not a good sign.
I really think McCain needs to start to roll out Cabinet Secretaries in the spring. Fiorina as Commerce Secretary.
this would give him needed positive media coverage.
more importantly, it would show the country he can establish an executive leadership team second to none- and while the liberals are destroying each other demonstrates the GOP will be working together for the betterment of the country.
Obama is Jimmy Carter- only without the sweater.
I'm prepared to assume that any Republican president will select a competent secretary of commerce, secretary of the treasury, and secretary of defense. I am prepared to assume that even though, in my lifetime, I have sometimes been disappointed with actual picks. It's just, law of averages, this is something Republicans don't screw up.
But if you pick one early, it may be one I don't like. Carly Fiorina, for example, would raise grave doubts in my mind about McCain's ability to run the government and manage the economy. She was a catastrophe at HP, and nothing about her says to me that her failure there was a fluke. McCain met her and liked her. Big deal. That they are crony's doesn't mean she ought to be given a big job. There are so many successful Republican CEOs, why choose a failed one for a big government job? (Ambassador to Tuvalu would be about right, I'd say.)
Same will happen with any given pick - someone on your side will be disappointed if not outright dismayed, and you will just be whittling down your own support.
That doesn't take into account all the folks who are supporting McCain with the idea that they or their favorite person will get the job.
That also doesn't take into account that for every person you name, you then own their scandals and problems, past and future. Who needs that?
There is time enough for naming a team once the votes are counted.
Just like she did HP's stock, as noted above. McCain might as well have hired Patricia Dunn.
...I was one of the first to float her as a potential VP pick, though I did so more for fun than because I thought anyone would take her seriously. I'm also well aware that reviews of her leadership of HP were not, shall we say, uniformly boffo. On the other hand, holding her responsible for HP's stock price, considering the period during which she ran it, isn't very fair either.
The female super-businesswoman who on paper would bring the most to McCain would be Meg Whitman, formerly of eBay. She endorsed Romney during the primaries, but nobody's perfect. Despite the fact that she's a brilliant zillionaire, she tends to give off a more housewifely vibe than Fiorina, but maybe that's a plus if BO pisses off women enough.
I have ZERO idea whether she's even remotely interested in the job, whether her views on social issues are too Californian for the Republican base, or whether you could make her seem like a credible pick even if you squinted real hard. She certainly has executive and international experience, but she may not know the first thing about international politics outside of economics. Fiorina, by contrast, looks and sounds the part of powerful executive - maybe that's why she got the HP job. If there's any chance that Meg could pull it off (and want to try), she'd have instant, mostly very positive recognition once she was identified as essentially the mastermind of eBay.
It really doesn't matter to me whether someone puts off a CEO vibe. The great thing about business is that there is a bottom line, and on that test Carly Fiorina fails. Meg Whitman, on the other hand, has been a big success.
I think it is fair, btw, to look at the stock price during Fiorina's tenure. How else do you measure a CEO? HP is not some flash in the pan dotcom; it is a large, diversified industrial company that has been around a long time. There is no stock market driven reason for a five year tumble in the stock price. Compared to the Dow Jones index, her performance was awful. Compared to Apple, her performance was awful. Compared even to Dell, which hit its own rough patch at about exactly the same time, her performance was poor.
Bottom line: She did a rotten job, got fired, and can't get hired as a doorman at any big company now. Why McCain would seriously consider putting someone who failed spectacularly and memorably in her day in the limelight in charge of the nation's economy boggles the mind, and makes one wonder whether he is right when he says he doesn't know much about business or economics. If he does float her pre-election for a big job, the Dems will pound the drums like it's tattoo night at Edinburgh Castle.
Also btw, I don't think McCain reflexively needs to pick a woman or a black to get some kind of karmic balance on the ticket, although, all things being equal, that would be good. He needs to accept that at his age people are going to be concerned that he might not be around as long as they might like, and accordingly pick someone superbly qualified to step in and lead. The bad news is no perfect candidates have surfaced as of yet.
Well, at least it was until Fiorina came around. They had some good stuff outside the computer area, which now seems to be about the only thing they do.
Some of us have fond memories of the company from before she took over. My first real job was with a small manufacturing company in the HPLC business. They decided they wanted to create a computer add on for a popular measuring device HP sold. The device would store data files on a PC and someone thought we'd be able to just manipulate the files. We couldn't figure out the packing algorithm and somebody approached HP. They not only came forward with an arrangement for us to see the packing algorithm, they cross-licensed our idea, had us put features in it for their version of the product, and provided incredibly useful testing and troubleshooting support for the programming work we did for them. I didn't work on the programming, but I did write the instruction manual for the product. They were some sharp people. I don't get the same vibe from the current company.
"...unlock the creativity and energy of the American people..."
When we do this, nothing can stand in our way.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...Huh...What.....Did someone say something?
--"Faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. Nay it is a Divine work, done in the Spirit."--Martin Luther
This may go down as a truly terrible pick.
Unfortunately, most anyone in the industry looks at her tenure at HP is known as a poster child for narcissistic leadership. It destroyed the culture of HP and now it is just a "business."
I really don't want Victory '08 to be run like Initech.
If that is what plays out here... It could be a real step back when the Democratic infighting was just about to give us just a little daylight.
Let's hope McCain picks more for substance on his VP than on his choice here...
"The great thing about history is that there is always more of it"
Sorry I couldn't get past your pejorative in the first sentence.
Best Wishes
and it says she is rumored as a possible VP?
That seems like a stretch to me, but she'd be a great Secretary of Commerce.