How Carly Fiorina Wants To Run the Country Like a Business

— -- Make no mistake, Carly Fiorina is running for president of the United States. But, at times, it seems like she’s pitching herself to voters to be CEO.

“The only way you go from secretary to CEO is you challenge the status quo, you produce results, and you build teams,” Fiorina recently told a gathering in Oskaloosa, Iowa. “And that is what we need to do for the American people.”

The former Hewlett-Packard chief, who made a name for by climbing the corporate ladder rather than rubbing shoulders in the halls of power, talks about governing in terms more akin to a business plan than a policy agenda -- placing emphasis on producing measurable results and talking tough about holding bureaucracies accountable, promising a “top-to-bottom review of every single agency’s budget.”

Fiorina’s case to voters is about more than her track record as a business leader, which has itself been the subject of some controversy since Fiorina was fired from her job as the CEO of HP. During her time as the company's chief executive, Fiorina oversaw a controversial merger that was accompanied by 30,000 layoffs. Fiorina explains her firing as a boardroom brawl and points out that she steered the company during the dot-com bust, when the technology industry as a whole was struggling.