For HuffPo's Mayhill Fowler, only the Second Coming of Christ could rival Meg Whitman as Gov. of CA

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Mayhill Fowler



Teacher, editor and writer
Posted: March 4, 2010 02:04 PM

Will Meg Whitman Win?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/will-meg-whitman-win_b_485691.html

Want to know what the San Francisco Chronicle thinks of Meg Whitman? Look no further than its headline of February 17:

"Whitman denies crowning herself governor." :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: Isn't this like asking when you stopped beating your wife? :wtf: :wtf: :wtf:

What kind of reportage is this? The press and the pundits have complained that Meg Whitman has avoided hard questions about solving the state's problems -- why not ask her some? In Walnut Creek last week Whitman lingered after the event to answer questions from the attendees who thronged her, until everyone had departed. This would have been a good time for one of those hard questions.

***

Whitman has the perfect temperament and centrist approach to problems to be a university president. So why politics? Why in the world would a retired CEO with a quarter billion of eBay stock join the fray? She could be setting up her own charitable trust to ameliorate something in the third world. So just like Brown, but for a different reason, Whitman is going to have to work to get voters to picture her in Sacramento.

Here is what Whitman has going for her. She is a worker. This could be, in the end, enough said. Voters like leaders who have toiled the 9 to 5. In Walnut Creek, Whitman recalled the Safeway grocery store down the road from her days as a Proctor & Gamble sales rep "from Vacaville to Gilroy." "I remember building shampoo displays in this store," she said. How many shampoo displays up and down the state did she build? That could be some powerful persuasion. Moreover, she is a tireless worker. She has spent the last year mastering the wonkish details. "I dove into the financials of the state of California," she said in Walnut Creek. She has learned to talk the numbers. Reporters, generally speaking, do not credit the intelligence of business leaders. And so the California press is underestimating Meg Whitman. She has been speaking with the governors of the other 49, picking their brains, soliciting advice, "looking outside for solutions that we can learn from."

She is a centrist. She is a pragmatist. Talking about California's latest contentious water issue, one pitting environmentalists and wine-making counties against farmers in the central part of the state, Whitman says, "I'm a supporter of this water bond. It's not a perfect bill. It has pork in it, but we can't keep kicking the problem down the road." She has that focused, cut-to-the-chase mindset of good leaders. She prioritizes. "If you put ten different reforms in front of the teachers' union, you will not get there ," she says. She makes a case for bringing a few tactics from running a business to government. "I'm a big believer in the 80/20. The 20% of reform that will get you 80% of the way home."

[Ozymanithrax]

1. With whom did Christ come first...

Jsut wondering?

[leftofcool]

2. Oh please! Whitman did what anyone could have done with ebay

she just got there first. But hell, she couldn't hire a competent IT staff to keep out the hackers.

[bluestateguy]

3. No gravitas, not qualified

Lightweight. Not a grownup.

[Grand Taurean]

4. First: What kind of Democrat is Fowler for giving a defacto

endorsement to Meg Whitman of all people. Cali would be better off with Arnie the Gropenator if the choice were between she and he.
Whitman does not have anything to be proud of. Her tenure as ebay CEO is not something to brag about.
Last, it is obvious she is buying the Governorship. I do not like people who think they can buy public office then force policies onto the public that benefit themselves while destroying the middle class.

[Faygo Kid]

5. Whitman is an ideologue, and Mayhill Fowler lost all credibility in 2008.

Not that she had much to begin with.

[DefenseLawyer]

6. I'm just a caveman, your world frightens and confuses me

but how exactly does one equate "Whitman denies crowning herself governor" with "when did you stop beating your wife"? The later is of course the classic damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't rhetorical trick which requires the admission of the transgression regardless of the answer. The former is simply an assertion which has been denied. As Strother Martin once said: Morons... I've got morons on my team.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. I had to flag that one

Normally, I try to copy and paste without comment. But that little bombshell had to be framed.

:patriot:

[Alias Dictus Tyrant]

8. Meg Whitman is an obnoxious busybody and petty tyrant.

I remember when she tried to get the state (city?) to shutdown a Hooter's restaurant near her offices because it was morally offensive or some such. God forbid she have to drive by in her Lexus and see it on the way to work.

Personally, I do not see much of a redeeming value in Hooter's but unless someone appointed Meg Whitman to the position of "Empress Of The Universe" she needs to shut the hell up. I have no tolerance for people who think they can use the power of government to force their small-minded vision of reality on to people that are minding their own business. I have no doubt that if she was governor she would try to lord over all manner of things to suit her personal insecurities.

[Overseas]

9. Republican Meg will be spending millions of her billions to be our next Republican gov

I hope we can replace our Republican governors and cruel Republican state senators with more Democrats who won't mind raising taxes on corporations and multimillionaires again.

[Sugarcoated]

10. What I want to know is

does Jerry Brown have a shot?

[tularetom]

11. I kinda hope she keeps running those TV ads

The more you see of her the less appealing she is. She has an annoying voice, isn't very attractive and parrots the same old "run government like a business" bullshit.

After what we've been through in CA for the past 6 years I don't believe many voters are buying that.

Brown outpolls her by 8-10 points from what I've heard. I have a feeling she won't be able to close that gap.

[Hannah Bell]

12. Meg Whitman: the scion of four generations of wealth on both sides of the family tree, &

a "made" member of "The establishment".

which is why ebay succeeded when similar ventures failed. it helps to have connections.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7694259

when you have money & connections, brains & character don't matter.

[TomCADem]

13. She's Not A Career Politician...Like Ah-nold...How Is That Working?

It is amateur hour in the Capital of the Nation's most popular state. California has had Republican governors in 23 of the last 27 years. How has that worked out for us?