THE EARMARK

California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has one major selling point for anyone who stays awake throughout her campaign rallies: She was CEO of Hewlett-Packard 5 years ago.

And there’s plenty of proof for that claim.  Just go find a back-issue of Portfolio magazine— specifically the one listing the 20 worst CEOs of all time— and you’ll see Fiorina prominently profiled.

Or you can ask…

• HP shareholders whose share values tanked under Fiorina.
• Compaq employees that got hosed in Fiorina’s failed merger.
• The board of directors that fired Fiorina in the wake of her hefty personal bonuses and middling performance.

They all remember her.

But maybe you should just ask Arianna Packard, granddaughter of the company founder, who can definitely attest that Fiorina worked for HP.  In the sense that she nearly destroyed the entire operation…

“I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded. So, allow me to disillusion you of a few of your stated reasons for supporting her,” Packard wrote.

“Most business commentators consider Fiorina’s tenure at HP to be a disaster,” Packard continued. “The stock price dropped by 50% only to rally 10% on the announcement of her firing. She fired 28,000 people before she herself was fired, departing with the 21 million dollar golden parachute that is financing her campaign.”

So if Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett-Packard was a disaster and got her unceremoniously fired, why on Earth is she going around touting her time there as her top qualification to be a United States senator?

We’re not sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that her #2 qualification is getting unceremoniously fired by the McCain campaign in 2008.

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.