VP Talk Heating Up
Team Obama is reportedly seriously vetting Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as vice presidential candidates. It’s hard to imagine that he’d go with Dodd, who I find likeable and serious, given that he’s running on a “youth” and “change” message and Dodd is old and has been in Washington since roughly the Civil War. Sebelius is a virtual unknown nationally but she’s a woman, which would appease some of the Hillary Clinton dead-enders, and an outsider, which enhances the “change” message. Plus, OTB’s Alex Knapp, who lives in Kansas, likes her.
Meanwhile, NPR had former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on and was touting her as a serious prospect to be John McCain’s running mate. She certainly adds some things to a McCain ticket, notably economic expertise and freshness. But she bored me to tears and refused to answer even simple questions, relying instead on tired talking points. I’m not sure whether that’s a plus or a minus, to be honest.
Really, I don’t know why the Obama campaign needs anything more than that.
HP closed at $116.25 the day Fiorina was hired as HP CEO. The day she was fired, 2/9/2005, well after the tech downturn was over, HP closed at $21.53. For that dismal performance, she took home $21 million dollars in cash, at which time institutional investors sued over this massive payout for her dismal, dismal performance as CEO.
That’s not change we can believe in, my friends.
Carly’s not flummoxed by Viagra — that might be a counterweight to McCain.
Hey Tom,
How do you rationalize HP’s leadership in personal computers without mentioning HP’s merger with Compaq? She lost her job over the perceived poor performance of that merger. Today, you cannot find anyone in Silicon Valley to tell you that the Compaq merger hasn’t been not only successful but the most successful tech merger ever.
Oh and about the severance package? It was actually 14 Million and she allowed it to be voted on by the shareholders. We approved… and we’re not mad about it either. So don’t speak for us when criticzing Carly.
I’m not sure about her “expertise” since she ran HP into the ground.
Of course, given the wiretap scandal at HP she would certainly be well-positioned to take over the helm from Dark Knight Cheney.
The best thing about selecting Sebelius is it might get her out of Kansas.
Being from the Connecticut stateof confusion, I would select Chris Dodd. I think Obama and he make a wonderful pair in view of the sweetheart deals they both obtained on their mortgage. This is what the left means by change -a different manner of corruption.
approval -9% and sinking faster than the Dow.
I followed her tenure pretty closely at HP, and I’m sorry but she was universally panned as a narcissist and a poor leader of the 1st order. If you have a subscription to that lefty daily, the WSJ, you can read about how universally disliked she was. The Compaq-HP merger wound up succeeding in the end, but her poor execution, unwillingness to work with her board and absentism due to her frequent trips to the Swiss Alps to up her profile didn’t help. Like Bloomberg’s tenure in NY, Mark Hurd’s tenure as the CEO has only demonstrated some of the major flaws of her time as CEO and the merger wasn’t considered a success until a few years into his tenure.
It’s hard to imagine that he’d go with Dodd, who I find likeable and serious, given that he’s running on a “youth†and “change†message and Dodd is old and has been in Washington since roughly the Civil War.
Discussions such as these are very difficult for me.
Does McCain really want a VP candidate with a wiretapping scandal in her background?
I’m not “speaking for” anybody, Steve. I’m stating some facts. I got the facts about HP stock prices from Yahoo finance historical prices. I got the facts about the golden parachute she received when she was fired from the Wall Street Journal and CNN, references provided and followed from her bio on Wikipedia.
Who do you think you are “speaking for”?
Maybe we should just make Boone Pickens the oil man president.!!
Or Vice Pres. lol http://www.tboonepickens.com
I just seen the poll results on Veep Peek, , As far as Obama Oddly enough Veep Peek has handicapped Wes Clark still near the top of the list. I am partial to Huckabee for McCains VP though. Huckabee is at the top of the poll list.!! Yeaaa! If you want to see the Veep Poll results I will leave the link http://www.VeepPeek.com
Well, it seems to me that if the above were so, then HP’s stock price would be high relative to its competitors in the field. Is it?
Funny, because I have been working in IT in the Bay Area for 15 years, with many former HP employees and Silicon Valley types among my friends, and the pretty much universal opinion is that the only real success of Fiorina’s tenure was the number of times she was on magazine covers…