A Woman Unqualified to Be President
Fiorina smartly doesn't flinch from discussing her ouster; she trumpets her firing "in a boardroom brawl." On NBC's "Meet the Press," Fiorina crowed that "we doubled the size of the company," and lectured that, in business, "facts and numbers and results actually count. It's not just about words as it is in politics."
OK, those numbers. Hewlett-Packard did grow under Fiorina's tenure from 1999 to 2005 -- but that was due to an ill-advised merger with Compaq that cost HP shareholders $24 billion and bought them a computer business that diluted the value of HP's high-margin printer business.
"This was a big bet that didn't pay off, that didn't even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP's board said was in store," Carol Loomis concluded in a devastating Fortune magazine piece.
As Yahoo News detailed, HP stock fell by more than half during Fiorina's tenure, while its technology cohorts performed "not as badly or much better."
Fiorina stumbled as a campaign surrogate for John McCain in 2008, famously saying that vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and then the GOP presidential nominee himself weren't fit to run a company. (She was right.)
She failed in her previous bid for elective office in the 2010 California Senate race, losing to incumbent Barbara Boxer by 10 points in a Republican year.
It's not sexist to criticize Fiorina for being unqualified. What would be sexist is to hold her to a lower standard than a man with similarly paltry credentials.
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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
Copyright 2015 Washington Post Writers Group
