THE EARMARK

If you’re surveying the political landscape in California these days, there’s plenty to cringe at.  A jaw-dropping deficit.  The lowest bond rating in the country.  An asinine ballot initiative system that allows the likes of Paris Hilton, Jim Belushi, and the Octomom to weigh in on everything from marriage laws to statewide budgets.

Now imagine that you’re Carly Fiorina, the onetime CEO that was fired by Hewlett-Packard and muzzled by John McCain.  You look at California in its complete and utter ineptitude and think: “Hey!  I could do that!”

Carly Fiorina, whose rocky tenure as chief executive of Hewlett Packard ended with her firing, is making serious preparations to run next year for the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)…

In a hypothetical matchup with Fiorina, voters favored Boxer 55% to 25%.

Fiorina’s qualifications for United States Senator are the following:

1. She took over HP, paid herself hefty bonuses while eliminating jobs, initiated a failed merger with Compaq, sent the company’s stock into a ditch, got fired and ended up being named Portfolio magazine’s 19th worst CEO of all time.
2. During last year’s election, she intimated that John McCain and Sarah Palin were too inept to run a computer company and thus would have to settle for leading the free world.
3. Nothing else.

And yet Fiornia slogs forward, prepared to endure a grueling campaign, the loss of her personal fortune, lists of reasons to hate her, and her own general ineptitude.

But it will all be worth it if she makes it to the Senate, because it’s there that she’ll be able to pursue her greatest goal of all…

Getting McCain to speak to her again.