Last night Google News was flogging the story about Carla Fiorina and Sarah Palin. It was giving prominent place to headlines telling us that Fiorina said Palin was not ready to run a major corporation.
My immediate thought was that none of the candidates in this campaign is ready to run a major corporation.
Then, if one looked further into the news articles, the truth came out. That’s exactly what Fiorina had said. Somebody with Palin on the mind had asked Fiorina about Palin, and she answered the question truthfully. But that person had not even asked Fiorina about the other candidates. Fiorina had to take it upon herself to bring that up. But that didn’t make it into the headlines. No, the news media are obsessed with anything that can be spun against Palin, no matter how contradictatory they have to be about it.
There are reasons for serious concern about Palin’s candidacy, e.g. on foreign policy — reasons that might keep me and others from voting for McCain-Palin. And I’m not talking about her level of experience.
But if you believe the news coming out of the opposition research teams, you’d conclude that Palin was probably the only one of the four candidates who would come close to making money for you at the head of a major corporation. Put Obama in charge, especially of a corporation that needed to remove the deadwood, and you could say goodbye to whatever money you invested. He’s never once bucked the corrupt Chicago machine. McCain would be too busy finding ways to annoy people to focus on his job. Biden just doesn’t have the chops. But if we believe the opposition research, Palin would get things done. She would be ruthless enough to make heads roll and get the people she needs in place, people who would be motivated to focus on the company’s mission. She would have just the right balance between focusing on the big picture and paying attention to the details.
It’s not necessarily the way a government should operate, so it doesn’t tell us much about her suitability to be Vice President. (Think about Ross Perot, a successful businessman who had ideas of being President.) But run a corporation? Most of us would pick Sarah Palin far ahead of any of the other three to quickly get up to speed and make money for us.