Possible Mccain Fiorina Ticket

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But she isn't robotically party-line. When I ask her what she thinks of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign—and whether the Democratic New York senator faced sexism on the campaign trail—her response is clear. "Yes. I think women in positions of power are treated differently, and the treatment of her demonstrates that," she replies. "I have a lot of sympathy for what she's gone through. A lot of women recognize she's been treated differently, whether they're Democrats or Republicans."

Fiorina, the daughter of a law professor and a homemaker, dropped out of law school and went to business school at the University of Maryland. She then joined AT&T. She navigated her way past various empire builders and petty tyrants in the years before and after the 1984 breakup of Ma Bell. She met her second husband, Frank Fiorina, on the job (her first marriage ended in divorce) and eventually became head of a joint venture between Philips and AT&T spinoff Lucent Technologies. From this modest perch, she was plucked to become the C.E.O. of H.P.

Her record at the company was, according to Michael S. Malone, the biographer of H.P.'s founders, "a catastrophe." The stock price dropped about 50 percent during her tenure. In 2005, the board unceremoniously dumped her. Fiorina says it was because she was an agent of change who was shaking up the gray lady of Silicon Valley, as H.P. was known; the board said that she refused to delegate authority and made boneheaded moves. H.P.'s stock soared the day she left.

Her flameout has naturally made good fodder for Democrats, who have put together a position paper ridiculing her record and calling attention to the fat severance package she received from H.P.  "The decision to entrust Carly Fiorina as an economic adviser tells you everything you need to know about just how little John McCain cares about protecting American jobs," says Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee's communications director. Personally, I don't think that's fair. Fiorina's record at H.P., while mixed, looks better in retrospect. The merger she orchestrated with Compaq, the subject of a fight among shareholders, did not prove to be H.P.'s death knell, as many had predicted. And her much-praised successor, Mark Hurd, has continued her acquisition strategy, most notably by making a run at Electronic Data Systems in May.

Fiorina won't say whether she's plotting a future in politics, and I'd be shocked if McCain tapped her for veep. It would undercut any argument he might make that his ticket is more experienced than Barack Obama's. But secretary of commerce? Sure. She'd be a pretty great promoter of American business. Even Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who tangled with her when he was on the H.P. board, has said that he'd help her run for office.

And she does learn. Fiorina has kept a hand in business, serving on corporate boards, including that of Steve Case's Revolution Health, a company trying to bring internet savvy to the antediluvian world of medical records. Case, the founder of AOL and former chairman of AOL Time Warner, is a Fiorina fan and says that she kept him focused on his customers. "We had some other opportunities along the way, but Carly was always an advocate for putting the consumer first, and she was right," he says. She also wrote a self-justifying but still fascinating book about her career—without the aid of a ghostwriter. Her corporate record doesn't match those of the other famous current and former C.E.O.'s backing McCain—eBay's Meg Whitman, Merrill Lynch's John Thain, Cisco Systems' John Chambers, and now Bain Capital's Mitt Romney. But no one in Washington is laughing at her, and no one thinks she'll be in that small office for long.

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