Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, can't run again because of California's term-limits laws, which means the 2010 race to replace the Governator is wide open on both sides — the only kind of scenario in which a political novice like Whitman might even consider running for office. (She could even face a former employee: Steve Westly, an eBay executive who won election as California's state controller in 2002, is a Democratic contender.)

Why won't Whitman just come out and say she's running as a Republican candidate? Her off-again, on-again efforts are increasingly bizarre. She didn't even register as a party member until 2007, when she started working on Mitt Romney's doomed campaign. She then staked out a far-right position on gay marriage, at odds with eBay's HR practices. She has yet to form an exploratory committee, a necessary step before she can start raising money for the 2010 election.

And yet she is taking vigorous action against a California businessman who registered several domain names related to a Whitman gubernatorial campaign. Henry Gomez, a former eBay executive who now serves as her spokesman, offered the lamest possible explanation for the effort: "We're retired. We're bored."

Whitman must be even more restless, now that she's quit her corporate boards. But her pseudocampaign is off to a rocky start. She hired Republican operative Steve Schmidt, who ran campaigns for George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain, last fall — but he quietly quit the Whitman effort in December. One step forward, one step back. She's not even running, and yet Whitman's finding politics much harder than business.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Whitman, as we've noted, is an oddity among Silicon Valley Republicans, who tend to worry more about lower taxes than hot-button social issues like abortion and gay marriage. In the Republican presidential primaries, she supported Mitt Romney, a Mormon with conservative social views. But it wasn't until recently that Whitman started talking about her own support for Proposition 8, California's recently passed ban on same-sex marriages.

Henry Gomez, the former eBay superflack who's serving as an advisor to Whitman, told me this week that Whitman's stand was "a personal issue." Many gay eBay employees agree. They see Whitman's stance as a deeply personal betrayal. As the CEO of a company in a liberal industry in a liberal region, Whitman never gave a hint that she didn't value gay and lesbian employees' relationships. It turns out she was just being politic.

Whitman's longtime executive assistant, Anita Gaeta, is a lesbian, who owns a house with her partner in San Jose. I tried to contact Gaeta to get her views on the matter, but she did not respond. Gomez tells me Gaeta continues to work for Whitman.

But leave personal feelings aside. As a practical matter, Whitman's support of Proposition 8 may backfire in fundraising and in the general election. Several current and former eBay executives, including founder Pierre Omidyar, lent their name to a newspaper advertisement opposing Proposition 8. Will they support Whitman's campaign now? Unlikely.

Her stance could also hurt her former employer's business. Already, eBay sellers are organizing a boycott because of Whitman's stance. And no company likes to be drawn into controversial causes. One might think that her handpicked successor, John Donahoe, might prevail on Whitman to moderate her stance for that reason alone.

California prefers its Republicans to be centrists — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, another Proposition 8 opponent, is the best example of this trend. Whitman's top two contenders, former Representative Tom Campbell and Steve Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, also opposed the proposition.

It all seems ill thought out — rather like Whitman's quixotic legal campaign to reclaim a set of domain names she failed to register before talk of her gubernatorial prospects became public. The sight of a tech billionaire harassing the small businessman who registered them are provoking giggles among California's Republicans.

Which is probably the right reaction to Whitman's stance on Proposition 8: not anger, but pity. Insulated by sycophantic advisors and accustomed to fawning coverage from a supine tech press corps, Whitman must not even realize what a joke her would-be political career is.

Whitman is widely talked about as a Republican candidate for California's governorship in 2010. But she hasn't even been able to win a set of domain names related to a potential campaign, like whitman2010.com. A Southern California man, Thomas Hall, registered that URL and four others. Whitman's legal team has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get them back. But an arbitrator at the World Intellectual Property Organization, which rules on such matters, has denied her complaint. Why?

Because Whitman, the ruling argues, hasn't established herself as a brand in the marketplace. This despite appearing on the cover of Fortune and speaking to thousands at eBay seller conferences. Her microfame, in isolated little worlds like Silicon Valley and the online-auction universe, hasn't carried over — at least not enough to impress impartial bureaucrats a world away.

Should Whitman forget about politics, based on this domain-name defeat? Yes, but that's not the only reason. She hopes to trade on her reputation in business, but that's been thoroughly tarnished by eBay's stagnation in the latter years of her reign. Spending $2.6 billion on Skype, and then writing most of it off, was thoroughly boneheaded; meanwhile, she worried about Google but failed to see the threat from a resurgent Amazon.com.

Hey, we hear Yahoo's looking for a CEO! A fixer-upper might be just what Whitman needs, since her good name is in need of repairs, too. Maybe then she'll be able to sell it on a ballot.

Update: Henry Gomez, a retired eBay executive who's now working with Whitman as her personal spokesman, called to say Whitman plans to sue Hall under U.S. cybersquatting laws. (There's no appeal available for the WIPO ruling.) I chatted with Gomez, who seemed to know quite a bit about California politics and electoral rules. How, I asked, did he come across this knowledge? And why is Whitman so concerned about reclaiming these domains, when she's not even offically running for governor? "What can I say?" said Gomez. "We're retired. We're bored."