Pirate's Cove

An interesting article by Mediaites’ Joe Concha

Carly Fiorina May Not Win, But Facing the Press Isn’t the Issue It is for Hillary Clinton

The candidacy of Carly Fiorina is a fascinating one from a media perspective. She’s a former CEO and political candidate…with both of those pursuits ending with her being dismissed.

The easy line of questioning of Ms. Fiorina has become apparent early and often regardless of the many outlets she’s appeared on since announcing her candidacy last week, and it sounds something like this:

If you got fired as CEO of a company, what makes you think you could be president?

If and when Hillary Clinton—the likely Democratic nominee—actually sits down for a major interview in any capacity, it will be interesting if she’s faced with the same scrutiny regarding her performance in her last job as Fiorina has endured. To that end, feel free to answer these questions: What was Mrs. Clinton’s signature achievement as Secretary of State for five years? And if we’re going through the full LinkedIn page…what was her signature achievement as senator? Why was she fired by Democratic voters in 2008 in favor of another candidate who wanted to be CEO of the party…and of the country for that matter?

Good questions. Will Hillary ever face any? Fiorina has faced over 200 questions just last week, while Hillary has faced just 7 so far since she sort of announced.

Concha goes on to list big time folks who have been fired at some point in the past. A great example is Bill Belichick, who was canned as coach of the Cleveland Browns, and is now one of the best coaches in the NFL, with a team that continuously is one of the best in the NFL, and has been to the Super Bowl 6 times as Patriots head coach, winning 4.

But playing a game of gotcha around getting fired? You might want to look at the list above again and especially Steve Jobs, who was fired from Apple itself before coming back to save the company and making it into one of the greatest—if not the greatest—American success stories of all time. On Meet the Press today, Chuck Todd asked Fiorina why HP stock went up seven percent after she was asked to leave. Well, guess what? Apple stock went up after Jobs was fired as well. As for the rest of those names above from Bloomberg to Blank to Iacocca, they’ve all been fired at some point of their careers, too.

Fiorina is making herself available, and not running from her record. Where’s Hillary?

BTW, do you know what the other big question is that Fiorina is facing? “Domain-gate”

(MSNBC) Almost immediately after former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced she was running for president last week, her staff was dogged by questions about why they had failed to secure the Web domain carlyfiorina.org, which had been purchased by a Democratic activist who used it to post a message about how many people HP had allegedly laid off while Fiorina was the company’s chief executive.

She purchased sethmyers.org for her appearance on Late Night with Seth Myers.

“Many reporters were nearly giddy about what I’ve affectionately labeled #domaingate when it came to Republicans, but none had bothered to check hillaryclinton.net or hillaryforpresident.com. I’m now looking forward to all the stories similarly labeling this a major gaffe by the Clinton campaign,” Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in an email.

That’s about someone purchasing HillaryClinton.net and redirecting it to CarlyForPresident.com. And then this

Thanks, @chucktodd, for having me on @meetthepress this morning. Btw, check out http://t.co/m9C6LxE89J. #domaingate

— Carly Fiorina (@CarlyFiorina) May 10, 2015

She may be a somewhat squishy Establishment Republican, but she’s growing on me.