One of the most notorious political ads of all-time starts a little something like this: A big, open field of grazing sheep comes into focus with a female voice calmly talking about leadership, honor and wholesomeness. A Grecian column rises from the field to lift one of the sheep above the rest. Then, it’s all downhill from there.
Suddenly dark clouds and lightning come on screen, the sheep falls and then we get the real reason for the ad: Tom Campbell, a 2010 primary opponent of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for the United States Senate seat from California. By the last two minutes, a man in a sheep costume with glowing red eyes rolls around the grass, scaring away the real sheep to drive home the point Tom Campbell is a wolf in sheep’s clothing — or something.
The nasty, and — above all — bizarre and aptly named “Demon Sheep Ad” is infamous. And the person who commissioned it is also running for president.
Carly Fiorina, a charismatic, one-time CEO of a major Fortune 20 company with no previous government experience, is seen by many as a long shot to the GOP nomination. She’s struggling to crack national polls to be allowed into the debates, but in the past couple of months she’s lit up the conservative campaign circuit and has gained traction by railing against Washington’s “professional political class” with her aim set at one person in particular: the Democratic ?front-runner.
Specifically, it’s half of her claim to fame. Fiorina for the past several months has been running as the Anti-Hillary, using her position as the only female in the roster of Republican candidates to constantly attack Hillary Clinton and her long record in public service without the risk of those pesky sexism accusations. And in a way, that’s Fiorina’s main shtick: female, conservative, outspoken and politically an outsider. Sound familiar?
To be fair, Fiorina seems a lot more like Sarah Palin 2.0 than the original version of the former Alaskan governor. The former appears to be much more competent and confident than the latter, but they’re both likely to be in the same business and are ultimately one in the same.
That’s because Fiorina isn’t really running for president. She’s, at the end of the day, auditioning to get on a ticket as the Anti-Hillary for the eventual GOP nominee come the general election.
In May, Katie Couric asked Fiorina if that’s her aim, which Fiorina subsequently labeled a sexist question.
What’s really sexist, however, is elevating the candidacy of a person exclusively because of her gender. Just look at her record: an outsider who seethes at the political class yet desperately wants to be a part of it — spending millions of her own money to do so — and a business “leader” fired from her company after bleeding it dry and overseeing the loss of 30,000 jobs with no time in public office and when she’s tried to get there, aired demon sheep ads.
Carly Fiorina isn’t Sarah Palin. But she isn’t far off.
edsalas@indiana.edu
