Sorry for old news, but in the previous coverage on this, I didn't see anything in depth.
Yes, just as George Bush has united a country against him, McCain has followed. For a member of his economic advisory team (along with lobbyist John Gramm and seemingly invisible Douglas Holtz-Eakin), he picks an individual whose company rose 7% immediately after resigning. He picks an individual who inspired impromptu parties from current and former staff upon this resignation. He picked an individual who, after laying off 7,000 skilled workers the year before, had the audacity to say, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs as a nation." This was an argument for expanding outsourcing.
This individual that could unite both analysts and employees in their ire? Carlina Fiorina.
From cnn.com's original coverage of her dismissal:
"The stock is up a bit on the fact that nobody liked Carly's leadership all that much," said Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners. "The Street had lost all faith in her and the market's hope is that anyone will be better."
Speaking for Wall Street's sentiment, from the New York Times
Mr. Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for executive programs at the management school and one of Ms. Fiorina’s sharpest critics. "You couldn’t pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer."
Much like the current administration's response to their failure in Iraq, she says she was flabbergasted at her dismissal.
One reason she was so blindsided, she says, is because after five years of her leadership, the company was on a roll.
"A company that went from not being in the top 25 innovators in the world, to leaping up to number three," Fiorina says. "A company that was profitable in every business line. A company who's brand had gone from stodgy, white, man, honestly – that's what the research said – to leading edge, relevant. This was a company transformed, from a laggard to a leader."
Some of these leading accomplishments?
In a stunning mismanagement, "...sales folk warned that some kind of backup system had to be put in place to avoid disaster. Instead, HP simply pumped the channel full of servers and storage boxes a couple weeks ahead of the switch, crossed its fingers and hoped for the best." This led to 400 million dollars of losses, missing estimated earnings by 23 percent.
She spearheaded a marketing campaign with the title of "Invent" while slashing R&D budgets and time to market estimates, leading to less innovative systems. She concentrated on building printers and computers more cheaply as the profit source, destroying the reputation of reliability that the company had. She spearheaded a merger with Compaq, companies whose corporate cultures clashed as bad as AOL-Time Warner, then proceeded to drive away the top talent that drove Compaq. (Sources here,
and the wikipedia article for those interested in a synopsis.
This is the type of leader that McCain surrounds himself with. Perhaps this gives more context to:
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you defend that gas tax holiday? I was talking to Senator Clinton last week. and asked her if she could name a credible economist who could support it, and she couldn’t. Can you?
FIORINA: No, I can’t, but, you see, I don’t think it matters. I’m a...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: How can you say that, though?
FIORINA: Because I think economists sometimes argue about the theory. Economists, right now, are arguing theoretically about whether we’re in a recession or not. An American family who is sitting around the kitchen table wondering how they’re going to pay for groceries, fill their gas tank, whether they’re going to stay in their home, whether or not they can send their kid to college this fall. For them, the economy is in difficulty, and all the theoretical discussion is, sort of, irrelevant.