Fox News Sunday: An exclusive interview with Republican Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina on her breakout performance at this week’s GOP debate and where her campaign goes from here. With political insiders calling her the biggest winner of the evening-- can the former Hewlett Packard CEO and political “outsider” ride the momentum into the early states? We’ll ask her. Carly Fiorina spoke at the Republican presidential debate last week: “My story, from secretary to CEO, is only possible in this nation, and proves that every one of us has potential.” Related: The woman who stunned Trump into silence – and threw the race wide open Over the next three hours, Fiorina used the word four more times, to explain how she would lead the country and describe how its current leadership has failed. “The highest calling of leadership is to unlock potential in others,” she said. “Problems have festered in Washington for too long. And the potential of this nation is being crushed.” “We [women] are half the potential of this nation.” Contemporary politics is full of talk of potential, promise and progress. But for Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard’s former CEO, the technology company, the word “potential” really matters. It is part of a language and style of speaking Fiorina has developed that is not typical of political speech, messaging experts say, but instead is drawn from corporate America – her natural habitat – with hints of motivational speaking mixed in. It seems to be working. Fiorina’s light-footed, punchy performance at the first “undercard” debate last month boosted her to the main event last Wednesday, when she turned in an even stronger performance, if the pundits are to be believed. (No significant national polling has been released since the event.) “She doesn’t stand out because she’s a woman,” said Frank Luntz, a political messaging consultant and Republican strategist. “She stands out because of the way she presents her case.” What’s been very notable during the debates is that her word choice is atypical for a political candidate Dan Schnur “What’s been very notable during the debates is that her word choice is atypical for a political candidate,” said Dan Schnur, a University of Southern California professor who was national director of communications for Senator John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. “It’s language that comes much more from the private sector than from the campaign trail.” George Lakoff, a renowned cognitive linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, saw something less benign at work in Fiorina’s rhetorical tactics. “She’s cherry-picking the part of things that happen to be true but hiding the systemic reality,” he said. “She’s pretty awful, and this will come out.” As left unskirted by Lakoff, Fiorina is a divisive figure, especially in California, where she lost a 2010 run for the US Senate by 10 points to incumbent Barbara Boxer. Five years earlier, she had been fired from Hewlett-Packard (HP), setting off a public relations battle that rages on today. “The company is a disaster and continues to be a disaster,” rival presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday. “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.” Fiorina retorted that Trump had “run up mountains of debt, as well as losses, using other people’s money” in his casino business. “Honestly, Mr Trump, I find it quite rich that you would talk about this,” she said. Related: Carly Fiorina will run for president as a successful tech CEO. Silicon Valley says that’s a fantasy Fiorina has built a strong counter-case to the argument that she damaged HP , beginning with the fact that the Nasdaq index of technology stocks tanked between 1999 and 2005, her chief executive years. True to her roots as a tech exec, Fiorina has adapted early and often. In her 2016 run, she has noticeably modulated her speaking style from her Senate campaign days, Schnur said. “She was recognized to be a very effective communicator during her [Senate] campaign, but it was a much more confrontational, and sometimes harsher, tone,” Schnur said. “She has definitely adjusted the way in which she expresses herself. It’s entirely likely that the people advising her on her first campaign told her that that was the way candidates talk. And she may have decided by now that that’s not what works best for her.” “She has a brevity of words that most politicians don’t have,” said Luntz. “She actually communicates like a very effective business leader rather than a very effective politician … It is a business-oriented style. It’s not based in ideology or principle, it’s based in reality and fact.”

• published: 20 Sep 2015
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