Time & Perspective Quote by Meg Whitman

A job-creator résumé, rendered as a campaign ad in sentence form. Whitman’s line is built to smuggle a corporate performance review into democratic politics: created jobs, managed a budget, led large organizations. Each clause is a credential, stacked like bullet points, meant to make “governor” sound less like a public trustee and more like a CEO with a larger office and better parking.

The “I think maybe” opener is the tell. It performs modesty while doing something aggressively political: declaring a whole class of leaders insufficient. “About time” implies impatience with the status quo, a soft rebuke to career politicians without naming them. The subtext is a familiar late-2000s/early-2010s argument, sharpened by recession-era anxiety: government is broken because it’s run by people who haven’t had to make payroll. In that climate, “managed a budget” isn’t technocratic; it’s moral. It suggests discipline, a fantasy of accountability that voters often feel is missing from public life.

Whitman also sneaks in a corrective to the stereotype of the hard-edged executive. “Listens well” and “led and inspired” are empathy words, there to sand down the ruthless efficiency people associate with corporate power. Then comes “drive an agenda,” a phrase that treats governance as execution: pick a plan, push it through, measure results. That’s the pitch and the blind spot. It flatters impatience, promising speed and competence, while quietly reframing politics as management rather than negotiation among competing publics.