Aug 7^th

Carly Fiorina is said to have won the “undercard” debate last night. Her opposition consisted of six “lightweights” who, with Carly, hadn’t enough poll support to compete in the 9 o’clock main event. Of the now (don’t blink!) seventeen competitors for the Republican nomination Carly Fiorina is the only female. One of her claims to fame is that she is not a politician; she is just an ordinary temporarily out of work business woman…who happens to be worth well over 120 million dollars.

That she is not a politician is not for want of trying; naturally someone of her importance should not be expected to begin their political career competing for anything less than a United States Senate seat, so that’s what Carly did… and she lost that election big time. Barbara Boxer, who had been in Washington over 25 years, beat her 52 percent to 42 percent. She got a whippin’. So she’s right, at this point in her career, through no fault of her own, Carly is not a politician.

Unfortunately there is some blow-back from Carly’s campaign. A number of the people employed by her were not paid. The campaign was in 2010 and these folks, none of them multi-millionaires like Carly, did not get paid until 2014. Some were owed as much as 10 thousand dollars. Many of them said that they would never work for her again and only part of that was her fiscal irresponsibility. Carly wants to control the purse strings of the federal government. If she can’t responsibly handle the finances of a Senate campaign, let’s give her a really big pot of money, the federal budget! Who’s for that?

She has explained her situation at Hewlett-Packard (HP) many times; that explanation now pours out like a well-rehearsed talking point. She did an exemplary job of running HP (Even though the stock dropped 53 percent.) It was a difficult time for all tech stocks. (Even though she fired 30 thousand workers.) It was just a boardroom brawl. (Even though the stock jumped 3 percent once the word of her firing got out.) It is obvious that Carly Fiorina has learned nothing at all from her debacle at HP. Perhaps if she had just a smidgen of political savvy she might not have had the HP debacle and she might have won her election against Barbara boxer.

If you have political skills it means that you are able to compromise, to find some common ground with your opponent. I’m thinking of politicians like LBJ; he was able to accomplish enormous amounts because he knew how to trade when trading was necessary. Of the candidates on the stage last night I didn’t see any whom I thought might compromise with someone of another party to advance their agenda. If they did appear willing to compromise what chance at the nomination would they have?