MEG AND THE BOYS - Meg stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Republican brain-trust. (From L-R): Whitest Black Man in America, Michael Steele; Meg Whitman, former CA chair of the McCain 2008 Committee; John McThusela, Washed Up Old Man; and some guy who ran for President in 2008 or 2004, I can't remember, Republicans all look alike.

It’s fashionable these days for ex-CEOs to come out of retirement and run for office.  California’s next gubernatorial and senate races feature two of them, ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

Their styles are night and day. Carly’s a snappy-dresser and features a website where she talks about a place called “Carlyfornia” or “Carlyfiorina” – I can never tell how deep her self-agrandizing ego runs. Her stumping is a bit sketchy and her campaign is mostly known for weird ads with floating heads and demon sheep that blend a Dali-esque surrealism and a touch of crazed Dadaism by way of  Terry Gilliam.

Meg is a sort of billionaire schoolmarm. She seems all warm, fuzzy, and June Cleaver pearls, but rumors about her character run more toward vociferous demands, a neurotic need for perfection, and not taking no for an answer – even when the command is to make the sun rise in the west because the morning light is better. Until this week she answered zero questions, sometimes even inviting the press and then announcing questions would be verboten. The rest of the time it’s tightly controlled canned speeches that read like a 5-Point Plan with fancy PowerPoint animations.

Mary Kate and Ashley on the Stump
On the stump they may look different, but their styles and experiences also make them look like two people in a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen pod. Both were wunderkinds when they took over their companies, but not so well-liked when they left.

SAY THAT AGAIN - "So you're telling me that I CAN'T just fire the President? That can't be right, can it?"

Fiorina was forced out after piloting HP into a smoking hole. She left with a Gucci bag full of severance money and a lingering HP board undercover operation replete with private eye spies, phone tapping, and intrigue like a Robert Ludlum book. The fractured board had a subpeona party when she left.

Oh, and she didn’t register or even cast a vote until recently.

Meg grew eBay to a garage-sale behemoth.  But after the company plateaued, detractors said a bonobo could’ve done it. After all, eBay supplied a one-company market. Efficiency and time to market doesn’t mean much when you’re the only game in town.  But what really soured investors was Meg’s purchase of Skype for an inflated price which then turned into huge quarterly losses while she tried to figure out what this danged new-fangled communications technology did. After she retired, eBay sold Skype back to its original owners for less than they paid for it.

Oh, and she didn’t register or even cast a vote until recently.

But the crux of their “value add” is to govern California like a business. They see themselves as CEO Governors or Senators. Cut taxes, cut “entitlements”, and spend more money than they have on education.

Newsflash: California Ain’t a Business
Neither of them understands that California isn’t a business. There is no hand-picked board to fetch your slippers and a nice brandy. Instead, there is a legislature almost evenly divided along ideological lines. There is no meek cadre of employees that can be easily hired and fired at will. However, there is a large unionized workforce in and outside of state government that’s scrappy and have some excellent reasons to fight. There’s also a “customer base” for state services made up of some of the poorest, least educated people in the nation.

The place is falling apart after years of neglect by politicians on both sides. Recalling pay-for-play Democrat  Gray Davis and replacing him with a Republican Gray Davis on steroids with a bad accent didn’t help. The state constitution and initiative process looks bad, even when compared with Namibia. You also don’t just talk to the folks down in marketing and change your service offerings and prices to turn a profit. In fact, there is no fricking profit.

In their defense, neither of these women are slouches. They’ve accomplished a lot and had their ups and downs like anyone else, but their CEO solutions are weak because state government is not just private enterprise with a weak profit motive and a bad marketing plan. It is a place with real, very difficult and sometimes intractable problems where people can’t be forced to do things and are in no mood to be agreeable with their opponents. California is more populous and it’s economy orders of magnitude bigger than most European countries. Plus, it has all the stresses of a multi-lingual, immigrant diaspora that dwarfs the number of immigrant Turkish house cleaners at work in EU countries.

Both women have some extra baggage, deservedly or not. Each is paying huge sums from their own pockets fighting opponents who need $5.00 donations to pay for last night’s copy run to Kinko’s. They used to collect perks and bonuses like Lehman bigs did and that makes some leery of their motives, as it should. Many believe that buying an office on your own dime is the same as grifting your way into it without the deep pockets.

It’s early yet. Neither candidate has done much politically so far. As the campaign season drones on, they’ll make mistakes like all the other candidates, get hounded by questions with no answers, and be badgered and protested by every malcontent in the western US and beyond. They’ll soon learn how different governments and companies really are. If they win, they’ll have to put away the PowerPoints and forgo the corporate government retreats in St. Baarts and get to the business of running California.

Judging from the “accomplishments” of other self-styled CEO leaders (see George W. Bush) here’s to hoping they have a meteoric learning curve.

California, Carlyfornia, and the United States of Meg all depend on it and we’re running out of time.

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