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I feel bad for Carly Fiorina. She answered a question honestly and in a way that makes perfect sense. And yet it was incredibly stupid of her in the political realm.
When asked if Sarah Palin could run a Fortune 500 company she said, essentially, "no, but that's not what she's running for." She later expanded that none of the four names on the ticket would be candidates to run a Fortune 500 company and that is fine because it is a "fallacy" to say that running the United States is like running a Fortune 500 company.
She's absolutely right. They are not the same skill. It is kind of like asking if any of them are qualified to coach the Green Bay Packers. We actually had a VP candidate -- Jack Kemp -- who might have been but it is irrelevant.
To blunt it, she should have immediately said "and I wouldn't be able to run the country."
In a moment of pure loaded blarney, when All Things Considered ran the story they ended it with this meaningless bit of arched eyebrow "when she ran Hewlett Packard she had revenues of $80 billion. President Bush's last budget proposal was $3 trillion."
She's right, they aren't at all the same thing. Being able to work a boardroom is not the same as being able to run a government, work with an adversarial (even when of the same party) congress, fight wars, engage in international diplomacy, play the necessities of political kabuki.
But she'll be hung out to dry a bit for speaking the truth.
And to the extent that the Repubilcans talk about the story it will be to agree wtih her that running the government is nothing at all like running the country when in 2000 Bush ran as the CEO candidate, looking to put federal government on a more business-like model.
And to the extent that the Democrats talk about the story it will completely ignore how much they ridiculed in 2000 the idea that running the government is anything at all like running a country.
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