In a long puff piece in the New York Times Magazine, Frank Bruni can't help but reveal a few telling nuggets about Carly Fiorina, the former business exec who is now the favorite to win the GOP nomination to challenge California Senator Barbara Boxer. Boxer has been slightly ahead in the polls, but Fiorina will have a ton of money to spend, and it could become a very tough race.

Among Bruni's revelations:

Back in 1999, when Cara Carleton S. Fiorina took the helm of H.P., all the exhilarating talk was of trails blazed and ceilings shattered. That ended fast. She was soon pilloried for sweeping work-force cuts, unmet earnings projections and tumbling stock prices; disparaged by the Hewlett and Packard families, who staged a narrowly defeated proxy battle against her merger of H.P. with Compaq; and fired in February 2005, the climax of an exhaustively chronicled corporate melodrama.

The idea that business executives automatically are qualified to serve in government long has been an absurd presumption. Businesses are in business to make money, not to serve the public good. British Petroleum is an obvious case in point. But Fiorina wasn't even a successful business executive. The job that made her nationally known revealed her as insensitive to workers and generally in over her head. By no measure could her tenure at HP be considered successful.

For Fiorina, who is 55, a Senate seat would be more than a fresh challenge. It would be a new loop, a more upbeat ending, even a validation of her business know-how, because she would be winning election at a time when the economy is issue No. 1, in a state with an unemployment rate above 12 percent.

Isn't that nice? Wouldn't that be heartwarming? If only Frank Capra were still around. Because in an era of multiple national and international crises, what the world and nation really need is an upbeat ending to a story about personal validation. Politics isn't about policy, it's about violin crescendos. But speaking of policy:

As the campaign has progressed, Fiorina has sounded ever more conservative. Months ago, she said she probably would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court; in more recent comments about Elena Kagan, she has come across as doubtful and wary. When the passage of the Arizona immigration law first made headlines, she deflected questions about it, trying to steer the conversation to what she said was the Obama administration’s failure to patrol the border. It was a prudent dodge, given the high percentage of Hispanic voters in California. But as the days went by and the questions kept coming, she said that she supported what Arizona had done, though she wasn’t recommending a similar measure in California.

Well. To those who care about issues, that might matter. Particularly those who care about abominations such as racial profiling and violations of human and civil rights. She doesn't want to impose such an abomination on California, but she approves of it in Arizona. Why?

She has won endorsements from both the National Right to Life Committee and the California Pro Life Council, who see her as a trustworthy opponent of abortion, even though she says she would have no litmus test for a Supreme Court justice and believes abortion should be permitted in cases of incest, rape and danger to a mother’s life. She is opposed to publicly financed abortions of any kind.

Californians are strongly pro-choice, and you can be certain Senator Boxer will have a thing or two to say about that. It's also particularly gratifying to know that the very wealthy Fiorina has a financial litmus test for even those abortions that result from incest, rape, and endangerment to the life of the mother. If you have money, as Fiorina does, you can choose to end a traumatic or life-threatening pregnancy. If not, you can suffer or die.

After slogging through many more paragraphs of politically irrelevant puffery, Bruni comes to this:

Fiorina didn’t bother to vote for the 10 years she lived in New Jersey and voted in fewer than half of the last 18 elections in California in which she could participate. I asked Fiorina about that, and she said instantly, "It was a mistake." But then, as if her lapse mattered only in the context of her current ambition, she added: "I felt disconnected from the process. I wasn’t running my life to seek political office someday. Well, I’m all in now."

It's always fun to observe when famous and wealthy Republicans first take an interest in politics just when they're trying to buy themselves political offices. Why are they doing it? Fiorina's answer is telling. She doesn't seem to see politics as a means of serving the common good. When not seeking office, she just didn't care about politics. Now that she is seeking office, she does care. Could anyone's rationale be any more transparently shallow and self-serving?

Carly Fiorina wants to be a U.S. Senator. Not for the benefit of Californians or the nation. Carly Fiorina wants to be a U.S. Senator for the benefit of Carly Fiorina. Doesn't that make you feel good?