Carly Fiorina stands on Sarah Palin's shoulders

There is another, more important difference between the two. Palin was a woman elevated to the high ranks of the Republican Party at a time when no other woman could be treated like an incumbent in American presidential politics, as Clinton is today. When Palin emerged as a figure in national Republican politics, her gender was, in great part, the story. A Republican woman in the executive branch, who’d have imagined before. Thanks to Palin, Fiorina does not have to make being a woman the point. This isn’t to say that Fiorina doesn’t, or won’t, know sexism. But when Palin was alone among men, her gender was the focus. Fiorina’s isn’t. 

Fiorina might have been a McCain/Palin surrogate. She writes in her book Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey, which was published this May, that two days before McCain’s campaign announced his vice-presidential pick in August 2008, the senator called Fiorina and informed him of his choice. “He had a request,” Fiorina wrote:

“She’s going to need help, Carly,” he said. He wanted me to help her get up to speed on the economic issues facing the country. The subprime mortgage crisis had been building for months. bear Stearns had been bailed out in March. Lehman Brothers would fall in a matter of weeks. I told Senator McCain I woud be glad to help her.

The help session never happened, perhaps owing to a comment Fiorina made on a radio show in St. Louis that Palin wasn’t qualified to run Hewlett-Packard. “To this day I have never met her,” Fiorina wrote.