Topic category:  Partisan Politics

Which is harder, being CEO of a Fortune 500 company or President of the United States?

It's really a serious question, if Carly Fiorina is to be taken seriously as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as those afraid of a Donald Trump Presidency want.

Fiorina has never served in public office, yet she thinks she's qualified to begin a career in public service as President of the United States.

Humble, she's not.

Ambitious, she is.

Is she delusional?

You decide.

Fiorina ran for public office once before, in 2010, in California, for United States Senator.

Fiorina lost, 52 to 42.

Undeterred, Fiorina is running for the most important elective office, President, relying primarily on her secretary-to-CEO business career that ended in 2006 with Fiorina resigning with a golden parachute because the Board of Directors wanted her out.

Fiorina has maintained that experienced politicians are NOT qualified to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company and is insisting that she is more qualified to be President that any of the other Republican presidential hopefuls.

A poll taken after the second Republican debate shows Fiorina third, with 10%.

The two other Republican presidential hopefuls who have not served in elective office are ahead of her--Donald Trump with 36% and Ben Carson with 12%, but she topped every candidate who is or has served as a United States Senator, a Governor, or a Congressman, or more than one of those positions.

In 2008 Fiorina boosted the Obama/Biden presidential campaign by opining that then Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin was not qualified to run a Fortune 500 company.

Fiorina added that neither was then Republican presidential candidate and United States Senator John McCain.

At the time Fiorina was a top economic adviser to McCain.

CNN reported the story as follows (www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/16/fiorina.mccain/):

"Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO turned top John McCain aide, said she doesn't think Sarah Palin is qualified to run a major corporation. For that matter, Fiorina said, McCain, Obama and Biden aren't capable of that kind of job either.

"The Republican presidential candidate has been trying to portray himself as someone who can fix the country's economic woes. But that is a far different task than running a Fortune 500 corporation, Fiorina told MSNBC Tuesday.

"Democratic candidate Barack Obama's camp immediately circulated copies of her words -- which didn't exactly paint their candidate in a soft light, either.

"'Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation, I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation, I don't think Joe Biden could run a major corporation,' Fiorina said.

"'It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. So, of course, to run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that's not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden or Barack Obama are doing.'

"Fiorina was president of Hewlett-Packard until her high-profile ousting in 2006 after the company's unfavorable performance.

"'If John McCain's top economic adviser doesn't think he can run a corporation, how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis?' said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. 'Apparently, even the people who run his campaign agree that the economy is an issue John McCain doesn't understand as well as he should.'

"Fiorina made similar comments earlier Thursday to a St. Louis, Missouri, radio station. She was asked if she thinks Palin is qualified to run a company like Hewlett-Packard.

"'No, I don't,' Fiorina answered. 'But that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things.'"

And folks say Trump has a HUGE ego.

If "[r]unning a corporation is a different set of things," then when did Fiorina acquire the "set of things" a President should acquire before taking office?

Fiorina deserves to be lauded for rising from secretary to CEO, but she doesn't deserve to be elected President when she has no elective office experience, failed as a Fortune 500 CEO AND insists that running a corporation requires different things than running the United States.

The American people have learned that electing a rookie United States Senator was a HUGE mistake.

Nominating Fiorina to try to neutralize the phony Republican War Against Women charge would be a HUGE mistake.

Nominating a person who has been hugely successful in business may be what is needed now.

That person is not Fiorina, who exemplified the Peter Principle (the idea that in an organizational hierarchy every employee will rise or get promoted to his or her level of incompetence) after breaking a glass ceiling.

Trump has NOT reached a level of incompetence in business, and neither did Carson in his field (medicine).

Perhaps that's why the post-debate poll puts both of them ahead of Fiorina, despite the media and Republican establishment spin that Fiorina handily won the debate.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.