From the beginning of her campaign for president, Carly Fiorina has had to deal with lowered expectations, encapsulated in a frequent question: Aren’t you just running for vice president? “People ask that because I’m a woman and I’m not a politician,” she told me earlier this year. “I’m running to be president.”
Fiorina put questions about her claim to run for the top job to rest early and often in Wednesday’s debate with a dynamite, substantive performance. Along the way, she was able to effectively shut up GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and come away the clear winner in the field of 11.
A testy exchange near the end of the first hour of debate between Trump and Florida governor Jeb Bush gave Fiorina her first big opening. The two candidates were arguing about whether or not Bush had misspoken when he said he wanted to spend less federal money on “women’s health.” Bush claimed he was misunderstood and was talking about funding Planned Parenthood, but Trump argued that Americans knew what he was saying and would punish Bush in the general election for it.
The next question immediately went to Fiorina, asking her to address a recent Rolling Stone interview in which Trump mocked Fiorina’s appearance. “Look at that face,” Trump had said in the interview. “Would anyone vote for that?” Trump, debate moderator Jake Tapper noted, later said the comment was about Fiorina’s persona.
When asked to respond, Fiorina was ready. “It’s interesting to me. Mr. Trump said that he heard Mr. Bush very clearly and what Mr. Bush said,” she said. “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”
Trump, for the first time ever in his public life, looked dumbfounded. His response was lame and, more critically, a retreat: “She’s got a beautiful face, and she’s a beautiful person,” he said.
It was a high point in a night of high points for the former Hewlett-Packard executive. Fiorina made a splash nearly every time she spoke, from an impassioned argument for defunding Planned Parenthood to a tough-talking prescription for how to address the Iran deal. After a tense back-and-forth over marijuana decriminalization between Rand Paul and Chris Christie, Fiorina broke in with an emotional appeal against legalization and for criminal-justice reform by referencing her daughter who died from drug abuse. She also got some mileage going after the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Mrs. Clinton is going to have to defend her track record. Her track record of lying about Benghazi, of lying about her emails, of lying about her servers,” Fiorina said.
But it was Trump who was Fiorina’s best foil. In the second hour, the two Republicans had a heated exchange about their respective business records. It began with a question from Tapper about Trump’s criticism of Fiorina’s CEO experience. Fiorina began by defending her time at HP as guiding the technology giant through “the worst technology recession in 25 years” and pointed to the company’s growth under her leadership.
“The head of the Yale Business School, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, wrote a paper recently, one of the worst tenures for a CEO that he has ever seen, ranked one of the top 20 in the history of business,” Trump responded. “The company is a disaster and continues to be a disaster. They still haven’t recovered. In fact, today, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, they fired another 25 or 30,000 people saying we still haven’t recovered from the catastrophe.”
Trump went on to point out that HP’s growth during Fiorina’s tenure was due to the company’s acquisition of computer manufacturer Compaq, which he says “really led to the destruction of the company.”
Fiorina shot back by noting Sonnenfeld is a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter before launching into an attack on Trump’s history of taking his company into bankruptcy. “You know, there are a lot of us Americans who believe that we are going to have trouble someday paying back the interest on our debt because politicians have run up mountains of debt using other people’s money,” she said. “That is in fact precisely the way you ran your casinos. You ran up mountains of debt, as well as losses, using other people’s money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice, four times.”
After a bit more back and forth, Chris Christie broke in, knocking both candidates for “playing games” by going back and forth about “their careers.” Fiorina wheeled around to Christie.
“A track record of leadership is not a game. It is the issue in this election,” she said. “I thought we had been hearing quite a bit about Governor Christie’s record as governor, actually. I think track records are very important. I completely agree that what’s at stake here is the future of this nation, and the future of every American.
But I do think that a track record of leadership is vital because in the end this election is about leadership. And let’s talk about what leadership is. It’s not about braggadocio. It is about challenging the status quo, solving problems, producing results.”
It was a long exchange that showed command and discipline, and allowed Fiorina to dominate—she spoke for more than 13 minutes, coming in just behind Trump and Bush in total speaking time.
But it was Fiorina’s serious answer to a question most Republicans likely consider silly that capped off her good evening. Asked about what woman should replace Alexander Hamilton on the face of the $10 bill, most candidates mentioned famous women in American history. But Fiorina rejected the premise of the question entirely.
“I think, honestly, it’s a gesture,” she said. “I don’t think it helps to change our history. What I would think is that we ought to recognize women are not a special-interest group. Women are a majority of this nation. We are half the potential of this nation. And this nation will be better off when every woman has the opportunity to live the life she chooses.”
The answer spoke right to the Republican heart while highlighting Fiorina’s feminine brand of conservatism. Overall, for a candidate who was not even on the main debate stage a month ago, it was quite a performance.
