Nikki Haley teases presidential run, would begin on broken promise
Byron York
NIKKI HALEY TEASES PRESIDENTIAL RUN, WOULD BEGIN ON BROKEN PROMISE. In a new interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, former South Carolina governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walked close to the line of declaring her candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. “I’m not going to make an announcement here,” Haley said. “But when you’re looking at a run for president, you look at two things. You first look at, does the current situation push for new leadership? The second question is, am I that person that could be that new leader?”
Haley answered both questions in the affirmative. “Yes, we need to go in a new direction,” she said. “And can I be that leader? Yes, I think I can be that leader.”
“It sounds like you’re close,” Baier said, and indeed, it sounded like Haley is very close to declaring her candidacy. “Are we getting to the exploratory committee stage here?” Baier asked. Haley’s answer: “I think, stay tuned.”
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If she does indeed run, Haley would become the second candidate in the 2024 GOP race, after former President Donald Trump. And therein lies a problem for Haley. Less than two years ago, in 2021, Haley said she would not run in 2024 if Trump did. She did not hem or haw or use wiggle words. She said it very clearly. “I would not run if President Trump ran,” Haley told reporters on April 12, 2021. Now, Trump is running, and it appears Haley is planning to run, too.
Haley’s 2021 statement came during a visit to her home state of South Carolina. Here is the transcript of her exchange with an Associated Press reporter:
QUESTION: [Trump] still has a lot of popularity. If he runs again in 2024, will you support him?
HALEY: Yes.
QUESTION: If he decides that he is going to run, would that preclude any sort of run that you would possibly make yourself?
HALEY: I would not run if President Trump ran. And I would talk to him about it. That’s something that we’ll have a conversation about at some point if that decision is something that has to be made. But yeah, I would absolutely. I had a great working relationship with him. I appreciated the way he let me do my job. I thought we did some fantastically great foreign policy things together. And look, I just want to keep building on what we accomplished and not watch it get torn down.
Haley’s statement came a couple of months after she did an interview with Politico in which she was highly critical of Trump and said flatly, “He’s not going to run for federal office again.” When writer Tim Alberta asked Haley whether “the Republican Party [can] heal with Trump in the picture?” Haley answered: “I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
Haley seemed absolutely convinced that Trump would not run in 2024. After all, at the time she spoke, in the weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a lot of people thought Trump was dead politically. Haley certainly appeared to agree. Then, in April, Haley told the Associated Press reporter that she would not run if Trump did. What’s the danger in saying that if you’re confident Trump will not run?
Then things changed. Trump began to reassert his influence inside the GOP. Even with the rise of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Trump remained the favorite of large majorities of likely 2024 GOP primary voters. At the same time, the clock ticked and the time neared for candidates to start gathering support, to make big statements about issues in hopes of attracting attention, to campaign for other Republicans when they were really campaigning for themselves. That’s how races begin.
In June 2021, Haley spoke to the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner in West Des Moines. In June, she appeared at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Around that time, she did an interview with the Wall Street Journal, which noted that her tone toward Trump was “significantly more positive” than it had been in the first weeks after Jan. 6. Haley also softened about the question of running if Trump runs. “In the beginning of 2023, should I decide that there’s a place for me, should I decide that there’s a reason to move, I would pick up the phone and meet with the president,” she said, referring to Trump. “I would talk to him and see what his plans are. I would tell him about my plans. We would work on it together.” That was a far cry from “I would not run if President Trump ran.”
And now it is the beginning of 2023. Things have changed again in the GOP world. After a series of missteps, plus the further rise of DeSantis and the simple passage of time, Trump seems a diminished presence in the party. He still has a lot of support, but he is not unchallengeable. And sure enough, Haley is talking as if she has already decided that there is a place for her in the 2024 GOP race.
When Haley sounded so positive in the Fox News interview, Baier reminded her that she had vowed not to run if Trump were in the race. Haley’s answer was long but boiled down to a very short point: That was then, this is now, and besides, Trump is getting old. “I had a great working relationship with the president,” Haley began:
I appreciate all the foreign policy issues we worked on together. But what I’ll tell you is the survival of America matters. And it’s bigger than one person. And when you’re looking at the future of America, I think it’s time for a new generational change. I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C. I think we need a young generation to come and step up and really start fixing things. And you know, all of what when I was that was before we surrendered to Afghanistan. It was before we saw this high inflation and high crime. It was before we saw drugs infesting all of our states. It was before we saw our foreign policy in disarray. So a lot has changed. And when I look at that, I look at the fact, if I’m this passionate and I’m as determined, why not me?
Was Haley saying that she did not know, back in April 2021, that Joe Biden would be as bad a president as he has been? That she thought things would be better under Biden and Democratic control of Congress? That is not an argument that will be welcomed among many GOP primary voters. Why not just say she made a mistake when, thinking Trump would not run, she made the seemingly safe pledge not to run if he did? Why not say Trump did great things as president, but his administration ended disastrously after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 — so disastrously that voters should not award him the presidency again? And in any event, Trump, who would serve until age 82 in a second term, is, like Biden, too old to be president? Those are all subjects on voters’ minds.
Haley made one calculation in 2021. That calculation has changed now, and she is preparing to do what she said she would not do. Of course people change their minds. But the problem for some voters might be that it all seems too calculating.
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