Must you always be so blindly liberal? It would be nice to be surprised by your every once in a while.

Your thinking is stereotypical.

If government doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter who's in the government.

Did you come here just to chastisize? Why not address either the post or the story?

And besides, I don't understand the logic of asking an admitted liberal to not-be-liberal-for-my-sake.

Unless, of course, your just accusing Ta-Nehisi (does sound like a lich I once raided...) of close-mindedness. Which is daft if you've read this blog

More seriously, that really should be a softball for any campaign surrogate. The easy response would have been to compare how running a state is comparable to being a CEO. This is certainly easier to spin than questions about Palin's foreign policy experience.

No, Carly didn't run HP into the ground. She did exactly what the board hired her to do, doing spinoffs, and acquisitions, and trying to get them to be less stodgy.

Unfortunately, I think the board was wrong about what they wanted. The acquisition of Compaq split the stockholders and board, but Carly pulled it off in a brilliant tactical campaign.

However, she had to resign when it became public that they engaged in spying on board members, trying to find leaks. The spying included gaining information under a "false flag", e.g., pretending to be someone with a right to information. Carly resigned. Not so good. But she accomplished a lot at HP, most of it good, and set up Mark Hurd to be a sort of "white hat" without the baggage of doing what had to be done.

In the end, I would much rather see Carly Fiorina as Vice President than Sarah Palin. She's probably accomplished more in a week than Sarah Palin has in her entire lifetime.

Fiorina should continue to open her mouth "to help" at every opportunity!

And McBush should continue to tout his superior economic expertise!

Know the only difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick!

Know the only difference between George Bush and John McCain ? Age

Instead, I would argue that the GOP's conservative core has been has been forsaken for a cynical elite willing to use whatever means necessary to perpetuate its own power and wealth. This is characterized by a "tomorrow be damned" type of mentality, manifesting itself everywhere from taxes to the gas tax to global warming. As such, to say such people are "underestimating" the task of government is likely giving them too much credit as moral individuals, as the concern is much more one of their own wallets than it is one of what is best for the country.

I'm not saying that liberals and conservatives can't have a dialogue about the issues. I myself am fairly conservative on a wide range of issues (though most of those are the conservative stances abandoned by the GOP). I'm saying that we can't assume that these people have the best interests of the people, the nation, or the world at heart.

On a serious note, I do think it underlines the view that anyone can do government if they just have some committed principles and stuff--a steely-eyed glare, a talent for folksy metaphors. While the American people can be dumb, I don't think we presently have a majority who care so little whether the head of, say, FEMA has any qualifications relevant to the job.

Of course Palin doesn't have the experience to run HP; neither does Obama, Biden, or McCain. For that matter, neither does Bush (I or II), Clinton, or any other recent president I can think of. Running a for-profit corporation requires different skills and experience than running a country. They also lack the experience to be doctors, firefighters, or piano tuners. So what?

I'm sympathetic to the argument that Palin lacks the experience to be president should something happen to McCain (although, tactically, I can't understand why Democrats want to make such a big deal of it), but this is just idiotic. Fiorina was foolish to answer that question, but that's no excuse for pretending this is important.

She's also a miserable human being. I don't see why we should settle for Dick Cheney with a vagina.

I'm a systems engineer by trade. In my profession, Fiorina is widely considered to be a bust as CEO of HP. Her major accomplishment there was to push through an ill-conceived merger with Compaq. Since these two companies were pretty much direct competitors (Compaq really didn’t do anything that HP wasn’t already doing), the merger didn’t result in any expedited business integration, and the hoped-for efficiencies of scale (created mainly by outsourcing most of HP’s product support), didn't offset all the costs. The disappointing financial results led to Fiorina’s firing in 2005 (to the tune of a $21 million severance package).

Fiorina was also criticized for trashing the previous HP culture, and alienating the Hewlett family and longstanding HP employees that weren’t loyal to her. In short, she was accused of elevating cronies and punishing critics.

Much of her notoriety seemed to stem from her gender, as she was famously the first female CEO of a “Dow Jones” company, and often appeared in advertisements. If she was male, she’d hardly have attracted much admiration based on her performance.

She's a lot like Governor Palin perhaps...

Hmm....sounds a lot like a large company. So perhaps the same skills are needed to run the government and business- skills that Bush, Palin and Fiorina all seem to lack.

I was telling a friend that if Obama had really wanted to bring Change to DC, there was an obvious pick for Vice President; someone who is universally admired, brilliant, forward-thinking and lives by his values. That person? Warren Buffett. The problem with him of course it that he'd likely have no interest in the job; but wouldn't it be fun to see the Hockey GILF debate the Sage from Omaha?

Carly "is this tape recorder working?" Fiorina opining on political candidates running a major business? On a related note, Isiah "taking the NY Knicks to the lottery and salary cap hell" Thomas has been quoted as saying McCain, Obama, Palin and Biden can't run an NBA franchise.