Being a Tea Party Leader

Sarah Palin has broken with the Tea Party and endorsed Carly Fiorina (R) for the U.S. Senate in California. Considering the welcomed endorsement, I don't know which of these women should be more embarrassed. Well, we all know about the disastrous career of Palin--but Fiorina? Here is what a friend in the business wrote to me recently about Fiorina.

I know a bit about Fiorina having seen her in action at Lucent (my customer where she left a structurally unsound situation much like Todd Whitman did at the state level in NJ) and watched her from afar at HP as a competitor. She in no way can be regarded as a having a credible tenure at HP. You can't give someone a good grade for making a few good decisions when overall her stewardship was a grade C at best. Was she the worst CEO ever? No,..but she wasn't anywhere near the top either. I think the best one could say about her is she kept the lights on which in some respects is an accomplishment. Mark Hurd who succeeded her is head and shoulders above her by nearly every metric. The only thing good I could say about her running for a government position is at least in the Senate you are not managing a ton a resources like one would in an executive position otherwise I would predict disaster.

The fact that Fiorina would welcome an endorsement from Palin says a lot about her. She seems to be squarely in the do-anything-to-win McCain camp by playing to the wingnuts. I wonder how much Palin was paid for the Fiorina endorsement. I suppose she will be hitting the loser campaign trail with Fiorina as she did with McCain. By the way, wasn't Fiorina a McCain adviser? Yeah, we know how that went.