Carly on Palin

I'm not a big fan of Carly Fiorina, but she's at least an experienced CEO who knows what a meritocracy of ability is about. She's also one of McCains key economic advisors. Here's what she said about Palin yesterday during a radio interview:

Do you think she [Palin] has the experience to run a major company like Hewlett-Packard?”

“No, I don’t,” Ms. Fiorina said.

I said there's no way she could run Goldman, and I agree there is no way she could run HP. But apparently she's good enough to run the country.

I can't imagine how McCain, Palin and their economic advisors (among them Fiorina) would fare in dealing with the current mortgage problems. Bush is very lucky his last Treasury Secretary is not a dud like the first two. Thanks, Goldman!

Common incorrect belief: it doesn't matter who the president is, or what his IQ is, he'll just bring in the right advisors. Now replace the word "president" with CEO (or Lab Director or Head Trader or Commander in Chief...) and tell me whether you still believe it. Smart people bring in even smarter advisors, and are better at deciding between conflicting streams of advice. As we say in science: first rate people hire first rate people. Second rate people are in danger of hiring third rate people.

...The Obama campaign could not have been more gleeful: “If John McCain’s top economic adviser doesn’t think he can run a corporation,” said Tommy Vietor, an Obama spokesman, “how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis?”

Let me clarify something: I'm not an IQ fundamentalist. There are many smart people would not make great leaders. They cannot connect with average people, lack common sense, are not pragmatic, etc. To be a great leader, one needs all of those qualities and intelligence.

The very fact that Obama was able to defeat Hilary in the primary implies that he can effectively run a big, complex organization. His silicon valley approach to fund raising was novel and wildly successful. Any of the other candidates (D or R) could have tried it, but no one else did. Does that mean Obama is a technologist? No! But he was smart enough to understand and adopt the proposal when it was brought to him by technologists! That's why I think he has the pragmatic smarts to be a good president.

As of the spring: nearly $200 million raised from over a million donors. In February, the Obama campaign reported that 94 percent of their donations came in increments of $200 or less, versus 26 percent for Clinton and 13 percent for McCain.

To understand how Obama’s war chest has grown so rapidly, it helps to think of his Web site as an extension of the social-networking boom that has consumed Silicon Valley over the past few years. The purpose of social networking is to connect friends and share information... A precursor, Meetup.com, helped supporters of Howard Dean organize gatherings during the last Democratic primary season, but compared with today’s sites, it was a blunt instrument.

Obama’s campaign moved first. Staffers credit the candidate himself with recognizing the importance of this new tool and claim that his years as a community organizer in Chicago allowed him to see its usefulness. Another view is that he benefited greatly from encouraging a culture of innovation and lucked out in the personnel department, with his own pair of 20-something wizards. Joe Rospars, a veteran of Dean’s campaign who had gone on to found an Internet fund-raising company, signed on as Obama’s new-media director. And Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, took a sabbatical from the company and came to Chicago to work on the campaign full-time.