Meet Carly Fiorina. Minimum political experience, a Republican who tried to become Senator for California but failed, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, but a woman. She is now running for the Republican candidacy for 2016 and the discussion is overflowing the pages of global political commentary.
It could be easily argued that there can be little surprise around a woman seeking the Republican candidacy shortly after Hillary Rodham Clinton, the woman that has come closest to the Presidency than any other, announced her own bid for the elections in 2016.
Her gender, however, is not the only trait that could make Fiorina a promising candidate against Clinton. She is a former Silicon Valley leader with both feet in business and only a finger in politics. Just what the tech giants need for a President. For many a focused CEO is exactly what the federal government needs to ensure growth and development.
Her tenure as the HP CEO though does have quite a bit of holes. Even though as Carly Fiorina has argued more than a few times throughout the last decade, the major printer company developed major number in profits and capital but at the same time it faced failures against major competitors especially in relation to its computer department.
It is significant to note that under Fiorina’s leadership in the company’s management, HP was forced to significantly compromise its share in the printer market for a deep dive in the PC business through a merger with Compaq. So, coming back to the argument that the new Republican candidate could do what she did for HP, for the US, a very prominent question arises: Do we really want that?
From even before the announcement for her new campaign, Fiorina attacked and criticised openly her main opponent and the person who may have significantly influenced her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton. She argues that Clinton has failed in her official positions, has proven the amount and significance of her leadership weaknesses and has led a very weak foreign policy agenda.
Carly Fiorina, however, has been discussed under titles such as “one of the worst CEOs” and hence it would be hard to believe that she has the capacity to criticise Clinton especially while, even under the assumption that both women have a few failures in their record, Fiorina cannot possibly reach the political experience of her potential rival.
What is safe to say is that if we in fact see a Clinton versus Fiorina next year there is going to be a lot of discussion on which one deserves the historic title of the First Female President of the USA. From a personal viewpoint outside the 50 states, a lifelong political leader who has made mistakes but has admitted them and has hopefully learnt something is a much better option than a CEO with a faint idea of the in-office experience who still stands by her successes in business and fails to completely address her eventful and abrupt removal from leadership in a US tech giant.
