Meg Whitman's Run for Governor Is About Jobs — Her Own
Gay-marriage-hating ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman is running for governor of California. First stop, the Today Show, where she talked about jobs, jobs, jobs.
The appearance instantly highlighted why Whitman's unfit for a run at public office: She's boring! Sycophantic underlings and starry-eyed business journalists may have been willing to hang on her every word, but political reporters have sharper elbows. Whitman has hired Arnold Schwarzenegger's political strategists, and she stayed strictly on message. But she had better hope no one looks too closely at her record of achievement at eBay.
She talks about the 1.3 million jobs she "created" among people making their business selling goods on eBay. But most of those people were already in business, and just found a new sales outlet on eBay. How did Whitman help them? By raising listing fees and forcing them to use eBay's PayPal, increasing her company's cut of their sales. She also overpaid for acquisitions, including $2.6 billion on Skype, a voice-over-Internet startup which had little to do with the rest of eBay's business.
Her career as eBay's CEO, in other words, looks like that of a tax-and-spend liberal. A spokesman for Whitman characterized her as "retired and bored" just a few months ago. Any bets on how long before this quixotic attempt at politics, fueled by her $1.4 billion eBay fortune, ends with her being retired and bored once more?
Here's her full appearance on the show:
