By Yours, Truly (*sheepish grin* I originally posted it in the wrong section! I've fixed that.---EA.)
Somehow you can't help thinking that Ted Cruz wasn't thinking all that much, picking Carly Fiorina
to be his prospective running mate should he manage, somehow, to come away from the Republican
presidential scrum with the badly scrambled party's nomination.
The man who seemed hell bent for making sure Donald Trump couldn't take the prize, and worked an
immaculate ground game on that behalf, making sure to play by the Republican rules Mr. Trump believes
have no business being there in the first place, has suddenly become the man who can't get out of his
own way.
Bad enough: His apparent bid in hand with John Kasich to divide a couple of coming primaries between
them---essentially, Cruz would stand down in Indiana and Kasich would do likewise in Oregon and New
Mexico---
has imploded. Aside from handing Trump and his minions plentiful enough ammunition when
they argue (falsely, otherwise) that the "system" is "rigged" against them, Cruz apparently didn't trouble
himself to secure Kasich's participation.
Kasich isn't exactly the most reliable of witnesses, but he seemed unable to wait to say, as he did to
a combination of reporters on the eve of Pennsylvania's primary and on
Today the morning
after, "I’ve never told [Indiana voters] not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me. I'm not telling
people anything in Indiana because I'm not campaigning in Indiana. I'm not out to stop Donald
Trump."
Worse: Cruz seems to have even his allies rubbing their eyes over Fiorina. There could only have been
one sound or sane reason to think of her as a running mate, if you don't count that she represents
an early sock on the jaw to Trump such as Cruz must have recalled from the debates. The sock when
Donaldus Minimus zapped her appearance and she landed the haymaker of all women hearing what he
said and judging for themselves. He couldn't spin his way out of that one if he'd put it into a Mixmaster
---on the high attachment speed.
The reason is that Fiorina was as cool as they came during her own brief campaign for the GOP
nomination. She couldn't be rattled, the way she was when challenging Barbara Boxer for the U.S.
Senate (about which more in due course). She was conversant with several defense and foreign policy
issues as her fellow candidates weren't; she argued persuasively for limited government; she was, in
short, what pollster turned pundit Dick Morris last fall
called "a Republican dream."Cruz could only have looked at and remembered Fiorina's campaign makeup from a few months
back. Several published reports suggest he barely began vetting vice presidential material within
the past fortnight. (By comparison, in 2012 Mitt Romney
began such vetting three months before
he had to make his pick. Fat lot of good it did him, but Romney at least didn't look like he forgot
the proper place for improvisation. And, incidentally, His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow Dr.
Barack Obama Dada, COD, RIP, LSMFT, Would-Have-Been-Life President of the Republic Formerly
Known as the United States, started hunting and vetting running mates in May 2008, about four
months before he settled on Joe Biden, whom he's said to have spent two months vetting.)
The Texas senator also probably figured that, with Donaldus Minimus flattening him in Tuesday's
primary contests guaranteeing the latter wall-to-wall coverage the day after, he could sneak in
a pick whose very womanhood would slap Trump's press conference remarks about Hilarious Rodent
Clinton silly. But Cruz couldn't possibly have seen Fiorina's business record.
Dan Mitchell---a libertarian political economist whose career has taken him from the Heritage
Foundation to the Cato Institute---would be more than happy to brief Cruz,
as he briefed
Time readers almost a year ago, when Fiorina first jumped into the presidential pool.
"There's no way Carly Fiorina can ignore her tenure at Hewlett-Packard, which she ran as CEO for
six tumultuous years before the board ousted her in 2005. By that time, the company’s stock had
lost about half its value and tens of thousands of people had lost their jobs."
Mitchell reviewed Fiorina's career, first at AT&T and then its spinoff Lucent Technologies, before
she landed on the Hewlett-Packard throne. She'd had a "stellar" record in those places, Mitchell
wrote, before landing at HP and after managing the spinoff of what became Agilent Technologies
into a successful initial public offering.
Then she settled in at HP. If "settled" is the word for it. "The plan" with which Fiorina began,
Mitchell continued, "was to directly take on IBM as an end-to-end, computing-and-services business.
One of her first moves was to announce the acquisition of the tech services division of Pricewaterhouse-
coopers for $14 billion. When Wall Street balked, she withdrew the offer. After the dotcom crash, IBM
picked up the division for $4 billion."
So much for foresight. The coming of the dot-com bust wasn't that obscure to that many people,
never mind at one of the nation's largest technology and computer companies. Fiorina might have
seen it coming. But she didn't. If she had, and if she really wanted to buy the PWC tech services
division, she could have waited until the bust to buy it on the cheap. Getting outfoxed by IBM wasn't
exactly the way to make friends and build confidence.
The good news was that Fiorina picked herself up, dusted herself off, and started all over again. The
bad news, Mitchell continued, was how she started all over again: she insisted on buying Compaq in
2002, for a measly $19 billion. "The decision," Mitchell wrote, "continues to haunt both Fiorina and H-P."
Taking on Compaq was controversial from the get-go. A bruising-but-unsuccessful proxy
battle ensued. Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of company co-founder Walter
Hewlett, vehemently opposed the deal. Outside observers and some big shareholders that
it would dilute the company’s core, profitable printer business. It did much more than that,
with H-P’s results sinking every quarter. Eventually, it led to 17,000 more people being laid off
as Dell Computer, much more highly focused on the PC market, came to dominate.
When Fiorina decided to knock Barbara Boxer out of the Senate, Boxer knocked her out about a month
before election day with a devastating ad. It opened with a clip of Fiorina saying of the HP layoffs and
outsourcings that followed the Compaq battle, "[W]when you're talking about massive layoffs -- which we
did -- perhaps the work needs to be done somewhere else?" An announcer came in right then, saying,
"Fiorina shipped jobs to China and while Californians lost their jobs, Carly Fiorina tripled her salary, bought
a million dollar yacht and five corporate jets." That was followed immediately by a clip of Fiorina saying,
"I'm proud of my record at Hewlett-Packard."
She was forced out of H-P in 2005, especially after a 2004 during which the company's net income
failed to rise despite a 40 percent cash flow increase, its debt rose by a little over $2 billion, and its stock
price fell by half. When Fiorina responded by firing three HP executives in a wee-small-hours phone call,
her board went to work in earnest to cauterise her, drawing up plans to shift much of her authority to HP
division heads despite her resistance.
Alas, the plan was leaked to
The Wall Street Journal, while
Business Week concurrently wondered
aloud whether Fiorina and the board could work effectively together. The board itself answered the question---
ousting Fiorina.
"[T]he board insisted that it wasn’t because of corporate results, but because of her “management style',”
Mitchell wrote. "Fiorina, who was often described as imperious and distant, took a lot of criticism for giving
herself big bonuses even while laying people off, and for hitting the speaking circuit even while the company
was in a tailspin." Not to mention that cozy little $21 million golden parachute, which is probably what the
Boxer campaign's admakers meant by the "tripled her salary" comment.
That ad destroyed Fiorina's Senate race. Her campaign never recovered; against an incumbent who
probably could have been beaten in 2010, Fiorina lost by ten points. "With the current animus for
high-priced corporate executives who make millions while laying off workers and outsourcing jobs,"
Morris wrote last fall, "there is no reason to make our hopes for the White House hinge on the ability
of one such CEO to justify her actions. To Republicans, it doesn't matter. We get it that you often have
to lay off workers and outsource to protect the remaining jobs still in the U.S. But if Romney taught us
anything, it is that voters don't get it."
Neither, apparently, does Ted Cruz. Fiorina tried to run for the GOP presidential nomination on her
record as a business manager. None of her campaign or debate cool could atone for the fact that
she'd have been better off running on an ancient Milli Vanilli record. As Mitchell pointed out, "so many
lists of history's worst CEOs" feature Fiorina prominently.
Cruz stakes much of his credibility on puncturing Trump's own questionable business record. Donaldus
Minimus---who resembles Henry Ford compared to Fiorina---should send her a dozen roses and a gaudy
thank-you note, for agreeing to become the Texas cobra's handpicked mongoose.
