Carly Fiorina is expected to win...

...the Republican primary tomorrow for the U. S. Senate from California. Her claim to fame is that she ran Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005. Under her stewardship, the owners of HP's stock saw the price of their shares decline from $52 to $21, a loss of over 60%. (During the same period, shares of Dell, one of HP's competitors, rose by about 8%.) Ms. Fiorina, however, was paid over $21 million when she left the firm as part of a severance package. Nice work, huh?

I've often wondered about the way CEOs are compensated. Are they really worth all that money? Do they really have that big of an impact, one way or the other? Take Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, for example. He walked away from the securities giant with about $160 million after the firm announced $8 billion in losses. (Merrill was later sold to Bank of America for a song.)

But who knows? Maybe the board of directors was actually very shrewd. Think of it this way: if they had skimped and hired someone less talented than Mr. O'Neal and paid him only $150 million or so, Merrill may have dropped $10 or $12 billion.

But again, I wonder. I wonder how much worse I would have done in their place. Take Ms. Fiorina and HP again. Now I'm sure that she has forgotten a lot more about business than I will ever know. But I would have taken that job in 1999 for a lot less, say $10 or $15 million. (Who am I kidding? They could have had me for $5 million.) And you know what I would have done as CEO? Nothing. That's right; nothing. Oh sure, I would have gotten all dressed up in a nice suit every morning and walked into the building with a BlackBerry to my ear and everything. And I would have smiled at my secretary as I strode purposefully into my office, but then I would have closed the door and done...nothing. I mean it. I would have just surfed the net or slept all day. And if any of my vice presidents had interrupted me with some pressing issue, I would have replied simply, "Do whatever you think is best." I would have let my underlings run the place.

Could my approach have possibly been worse than Ms. Fiorina's? Be honest. Would HP's stock have fallen by more than 60% in five years? I doubt it. Those vice presidents are very capable people. They didn't get those jobs by accident.

Let's say the stock fell by only 50%. I would have been considered a genius! I would have had my picture on the covers of Business Week and Forbes. All across America, business school professors would have been teaching the "Tracy Method" in their classes. Move over, Jack Welch, there's a new guy in town!

And if my strategy failed? If HP had lost more money on my watch? Oh well, I could always join Mr. O'Neal on the board of directors at Alcoa. That's right. After making such a mess of things at Merrill, Stan O'Neal was hired to...what? Advise the management on strategy? I doubt it. I hope not. No, I have to think Mr. O'Neal was hired to serve on some compensation committee that will approve a huge package for the CEO.

And if that didn't work? Heck, there's always the United States Senate.