Michael Hiltzik: Introducing the new Carly....
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...Just like the old Carly?
My column for Thursday raises the question of whether the newly minted candidate for U.S. Senate from California will fall prey to the same flaws often cited by critics of her management at Hewlett-Packard: too much Carly, too many fancy advisors and not enough deep thought.
The opening of the campaign was not auspicious. Much of Fiorina’s presentation at the launch event came out of the tired GOP playbook. There was one new wrinkle. She announced that she had signed the read-my-lips-no-tax-hikes Taxpayer Protection Pledge concocted by the egregious Grover Norquist -- a brain-dead approach to governing that pleases the far right, and should disappoint everyone else.
Signs are that this was a preemptive counter-strike against an incipient attack by right-wing Tea Party activists, who are gearing up to undermine Fiorina as they did the moderate GOP candidate in this week’s New York State congressional special election. The result there: A victory for the Democrat in the race, marking the first time a Democrat has held that seat since the Civil War.
It would be a shame if the same thing happens in California. Fiorina has enough self-inflicted problems to make a race against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer an uphill battle. She doesn’t need sniping from the fringe of her own party.
The column begins below:
The most cherished American credo is that anyone can grow up and run for high office. Carly Fiorina’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate, which she formally announced Wednesday, will put this notion to the test. Specifically: Can someone who has spent the last few years running from her checkered record as a big-business CEO, shown so little interest in politics that she consistently failed to vote and has at best a tenuous grasp of such major issues as health reform prevail in a statewide California election? Fiorina launched her campaign with an op-ed in the Orange County Register and a kickoff rally at the Garden Grove plant of Earth Friendly Products, a maker of “green” detergents. Even by California standards, this was a curious event. If nothing else, it may establish the Fiorina campaign as a pioneer in moving the art of product placement out of Hollywood and into politics, as it started with an introduction by Earth Friendly’s PR lady, Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, who seemed to spend more time extolling her merchandise (“We deliver responsible sustainability in all of our products, including our bestsellers, Ecos Wave and Dishmate…”) than Fiorina’s candidacy. Still, it did give Fiorina an aura of being the business-friendly Senate candidate. This plainly will be a major theme of her campaign against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer. (Assuming she beats state Assemblyman Chuck Devore of Irvine in the GOP primary.) When I examined a Fiorina-Boxer matchup two months ago, I noted that few could argue that we wouldn’t benefit from seeing Boxer defend her 17-year record in the Senate, and asked whether Fiorina would make the race about us, the voters, rather than about the most frequent subject of her public appearances and her 2006 book, “Tough Choices,” herself.
-- Michael Hiltzik
