Nikki Haley’s presidential race so far is a lesson in triteness
Quin Hillyer
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New presidential candidate Nikki Haley today provided a picture-perfect case study of vapidity when appearing on Fox News Sunday.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, already had been met with high-profile feedback about the lack of substance in her early campaign message.
Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal Saturday that Haley’s campaign announcement was “tired, clichéd, and phony. … She was in a position to do something nonidiotic. This [approach] seemed like a decision not to.” And Haley’s message was “empty, circular” rather than giving “strong, clear, honest stands on issues of great import.”
NIKKI HALEY SAYS SHE IS NOT FOCUSING ON TRUMP
Likewise, National Review editor Rich Lowry, who made clear he generally admires Haley, already had written that her campaign launch seemed “highly conventional” while noting that “Haley doesn’t have a distinctive issue.”
On Fox, host Shannon Bream was direct: “Many are now asking for more specifics about her policies and plans.” The Wall Street Journal, she told Haley, said, “you have to provide a rationale for your candidacy, that you haven’t done yet, you’ve gotta answer this question about ‘why YOU’ … [You say] things that any GOP candidate is going to say, so why you?”
In reply, Haley said nothing about issues but instead offered the solipsism and narcissism of her biography. Why her? Because she is the wife of a combat veteran, mother of a young lady about to be married, mother of a son being fed wokeness at college, and “daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what’s happening at the border.”
Bream tried to push Haley again for specifics “on policies, on issues” but got nothing but pablum.
“I think it’s time that we start putting a fire under what’s happening in Congress,” Haley said. “I think it’s time for us to be getting aggressive, getting back to what it means to end socialism in this country and end the defeatism that has taken over. … I think [Americans] need a new generation, I think we need new energy going in. I think we need to leave the status quo of the past and start looking ahead and that’s what I’m gonna do. … First, we’ve got to stop the spending binge. We’ve got to put Washington, D.C., on a diet. … We’ve gotta work on a way to actually pay down this debt.”
Oh, and we also need to stop borrowing. Gee, that’s bold. I’m sure we also need to eat our Wheaties, do daily sit-ups, brush our teeth, and follow the Golden Rule.
What’s frustrating is that Haley can do better than that.
Even granting that former top Trump officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo both portrayed her U.N. performance as a self-serving performance art more than substance, Haley did at times make a quite effective public case there for U.S. policies, and her record in South Carolina was pretty good, too. There’s no need for her to prattle on about “a new generation of leadership” as if both the idea and the phrase are bold and new when we’ve heard hundreds of candidates in the past 60 years steal the exact same phrase from the late John F. Kennedy.
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Hint: If you are claiming to be a new generation, don’t steal a hackneyed phrase from someone who died nine years before you were born.
As a generally conservative, reasonably competent, cleverly calculating political animal, Haley might be a better president than most. She might be one of the best combinations of winnability and governability that Republicans can offer. So far, though, her candidacy looks light as a feather.