Nikki Haley's political career trajectory has been gladdening to watch. She went from being a South Carolina governor with a pretty good track record from a conservative standpoint to one of the four outstanding UN ambassadors of my lifetime, the others being Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick and John Bolton. Her ringing defenses of Israel and full-throated defiances of various bad actors were enough to make me believe that Western civilization perhaps had a chance.
I haven't read her new book, but apparently it has launched a speculative back-and-forth as to whether her service in the Trump administration has caused her fealty to core principles to take a back seat :
Haley recounts a closed-door encounter with then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: "Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren't being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country … Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president's decisions was because, if he didn't, people would die. This was how high the stakes were, he and Kelly told me. We are doing the best we can do to save the country, they said. We need you to work with us and help us do it. This went on for over an hour."O'Donnell asked, "You memorialized that conversation? It definitely happened?"
"It absolutely happened," said Haley. "And instead of saying that to me, they should've been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan. It should've been, 'Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don't like what he's doing.' But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing. And it goes against the Constitution, and it goes against what the American people want. And it was offensive."
[We asked them to respond. John Kelly tells "Sunday Morning": "If by resistance and stalling she means putting a staff process in place … to ensure the (president) knew all the pros and cons of what policy decision he might be contemplating so he could make an informed decision, then guilty as charged."]
Haley remains a fierce Trump loyalist, including on the issue of his asking the Ukrainian president to dig for dirt on the family of Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
O'Donnell asked, "Do you think ultimately the president will be impeached and removed from office?"
Haley replied, "No. On what? You're gonna impeach a president for asking for a favor that didn't happen and giving money and it wasn't withheld? I don't know what you would impeach him on. And look, Norah, impeachment is, like, the death penalty for a public official. When you look at the transcript, there's nothing in that transcript that warrants the death penalty for the president."
"To be clear, it was not a complete transcript. There are still things that are missing from it. And in it, he does say, 'I would like you to do us a favor, though.'"
"The Ukrainians never did the investigation. And the president released the funds. I mean, when you look at those, there's just nothing impeachable there. And more than that, I think the biggest thing that bothers me is the American people should decide this. Why do we have a bunch of people in Congress making that decision?"Of course, this portion of the interview is going to get both sides of the whether-impeachment-is-something-that-ought-to-happen question up on their hind legs.
CBS News has not helped matters any by inserting the subjective term "loyalist" into its reportage here. I don't think a parsing of her weigh-ins on any controversies impacting her since Trump's been president warrant that label. She's distanced herself when he's gone off the rails.
That said, I'm not pleased with her Mulvaney-esque treatment of the Trump-Zelensky phone call. Squirrel-Hair was definitely signaling that he expected some sniffing for Biden family nefariousness in exchange for busting loose the military aid.
And given Kelly's response, boldfaced above, it seems there's a real difference in the interpretation of their interactions about this.
Still, I'd caution Heath Mayo, a figure I'd not come across until recently, but who spearheads a group / movement whose aims I am solidly behind, Principles First, to step back and consider the big picture. I don't know that his jettisoning of Haley does anything but create further fissures among a bloc of us who ought to be finding common ground. He seems ready to completely dismiss her, which strikes me as hasty:
Then again, maybe he has some kind of inside insight that spurs him to conclude thusly. Maybe she has been overcome with raw political calculation, making her post-public-service moves entirely based on which side her bread is buttered on.Wow. Now @NikkiHaley is misrepresenting and disparaging the service of her colleagues John Kelly and Rex Tillerson. Good on Kelly for having none of it. Nikki’s nosediving fast—and it’s sad to watch.
But this seems to me to be of a piece with some recent beating-up that Rich Lowry has come in for with regard to his new book on how nationalism can be a good thing, or Ted Cruz's maneuverings through the sociopolitical lanscape of the current moment.
Where I'm going with all this is this: Please, let's not be eating our own at this particular moment. There are not that many of us to begin with. I don't know exactly how we stack up statistically against Trumpism and jackbooted, foaming-at-the-mouth leftism, but we can ill afford to engage in a circular firing squad.
I just don't think there was some moment in the last three years at which Nikki Haley stood in her office or her home dining room and, with eyes bugging out, declared to the heavens above, "MAGA!"
So please ease up. Let's stay serious. Primacy of principles really means respectfully engaging others with a track record of being motivated by just that.
It's very late in the day. There's not a lot of time to fool with yet another layer of turf battles, especially those that are unnecessary.
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