Carly Fiorina: ‘Politics is personal — people need to know you care’

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said Thursday that while policy matters, tone and empathy are hugely important for politicians, pointing to exit polling from the 2012 presidential contest to illustrate her point.

She said if you look at the 2012 exit polling, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won on “every substantive issue” but lost overwhelmingly on the question of “cares about someone like me.”

“For most people, politics is personal,” she told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “I think that policy is important but I also think empathy and connection are hugely important. I think people understanding where you come from, what your story is, what your background is, is as important to any leadership role, but particularly running for the president of the United States as your policies.”

“When we don’t convey that we care, of course people are going to say, ’if you don’t care about me, I’m not [going to] vote for you,’” she said. “That’s why the Romney exit polling data was interesting. Politics is personal — people need to know you care.”

She pointed to Republicans’ public statements on work requirements for welfare as an area where the argument could be reframed.

“We have to change the incentives in … safety net programs so that we are encouraging people to step forward,” she said. “I think tone matters hugely.

“Here’s an example: frequently you will hear Republicans say, ’we need a work requirement in welfare to save money,’” she said. “No — we need a work requirement in welfare to save lives. People need the dignity of work. And so when people work, we can’t make the risks in their life go up by the way we’ve structured these programs. We need to reduce risk.”

Ms. Fiorina, who is weighing a bid for president in 2016, also said many Americans think people who have been in politics their entire lives are disconnected.

“Most Americans think that the professional political class isn’t a particularly good invention,” she said. “And it’s a modern invention - for most of our nation’s history, we didn’t have a professional political class. We had people who came from private life, went into public service for a time and then returned once again to private life.”

Ms. Fiorina lost a U.S. Senate bid in California in 2010, but said she ran as a pro-life candidate in the deep blue state and managed to unify the party.

“Many Americans think that people who have been in politics all their lives somehow are disconnected from the rest of us,” she said.