Carly Fiorina: Who Is This Female Republican Running For President?
Carly Fiorina is anything but a career politician. In fact, until she became a Republican contender for the presidency, she held a number of civilian jobs. She started out as a secretary for a real-estate company. Eventually, Fiorina became the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 business. Due to her leadership, Hewlett-Packard became the 11th largest company within the U.S.
As with any business leader, Fiorina was not always popular, but she stuck to her guns and made changes that boosted HP to the top of the business world food chain. The resistance came because those around her did not want to see any changes occur within the business model.
Her website, carlyforpresident.com, offers similarities between politics and business.
“Our nation faces this very same problem today–where career politicians protect the current system that personally benefits them, but no longer works for the American people. Our founders never imagined a government led by career politicians. It’s time to put a citizen leader in the White House. “
No longer the Hewlett-Packard CEO, Fiorina now focuses on giving back to her community and the American people. She is a member of the CIA External Advisory Board. Here she addresses some of the biggest foreign policy crises. Top-secret security clearance affords her institutional knowledge of such issues and how to resolve them.
She also hold many Chairman positions: the American Conservative Union Foundation, Opportunity International, “the premier global financial services organization for the poor,” and Good360, “the world’s largest product philanthropy organization.”
Most politicians offer up detailed ideas that they will execute during their presidency. On NBC News, Carly Fiorina was asked about her lack of a formal, written tax plan.
With a smile on her face and sincerity in her voice, she explained.
“Anybody can write a plan. Anybody can put a plan on a website. I think voters have gotten smart enough to know that plans and paper, 50-point plans, 10-point plans, five-point plans are written by a bunch of advisors and consultants. So I’m perfectly prepared to be held accountable for my words and plans.”
Her unspoken meaning could be that these candidates do not fully understand the formal plans they put out for the voting public to scrutinize because they did not write the policy themselves. They would be reluctant to answer any questions on it, due to the fact that they may not fully understand what has been written in their name.
In addition, she warned that politicians put out detailed accounts of their plans all the time, but those plans are rarely put into any sort of formal action. Fiorina believes that candidates are held more accountable by answering voters questions, with our without a written document being posted on the website.
Fiorina offers a questions link on her website and then answers those questions in a public forum along the campaign trail. She believes that offering plans and answers in person, while making eye contact with the public, means more to people than anything written on the candidate’s website.
She also states that “if something is so complicated, you can’t understand it, what do you suppose the chances are that you’re getting taken advantage of? They’re almost 100 percent. So people don’t need a complicated plan. What they need is a clear, common-sense commitment to what needs to get done.”
Although Carly Fiorina may not have a written plan available for the public eye, she did give verbal instructions for what she believes needs to happen. She does not agree that our tax code should be 73,000 pages in length, with 4,000 changes in the past 14 years. Fiorina says her plans are very simple: the code only needs to be three pages long, all rates need to be lowered, and every loophole must be closed.
[Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images]
