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.
