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Consider the irony: Even as liberal women denounce the Trump presidency as a bastion of male swagger and anti-woman policies, could it prove a platform for Nikki R. Haley to emerge as a viable Republican presidential candidate?
Haley, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has been ubiquitous this month, denouncing Syria’s chemical weapons attack at the United Nations and on the Sunday talk shows last weekend. She gained a seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee as part of the shake-up that ousted Stephen K. Bannon.
Before the Syria attack, she was taking a tougher public line on Russia than her boss, denouncing Iran and deriding the United Nations for hostility to Israel — all catnip to mainstream Republicans. In an administration whose visuals run toward roomfuls of white men, this daughter of Indian immigrants is capitalising on her very public stage.
Yet the obstacles are as real as the opportunities. A woman who denounced Trump during the campaign may well be yoked to the fate of a so far rocky presidency. Her future political viability depends on a tricky balancing act: how well she can position herself as distinct from Trump without seeming insubordinate. Her stance on the aggressive use of US force overseas and her early condemnation of Russia hew more to the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party than the Bannon “America First” wing, though in an administration that seems to make up its foreign policy on the fly, it’s hard to decide who’s prevailing when.
Women who aspire to high political office have long felt the need to acquire national security credentials — one reason the UN job was appealing to a foreign policy novice like Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. But voter surveys in the last election suggested that many voters still trusted a man more than a woman to keep them safe.
‘In a very tough spot’
“She’s in a very tough spot,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Centre for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “She has the potential now to be seen as the voice on national security issues. But at the end of the day, she is still up against the underlying presumption that men are stronger on foreign policy than women.”
In public forums, Haley has deflected questions about her future by saying she is concentrating on her current job; the US mission did not respond to a request for comment. Veteran observers of South Carolina politics, both Republican and Democrat, say they would not underestimate her ambition or survival skills. To a man, they described local South Carolina politics as an arena that would give even gladiators pause — and Haley as emerging victorious in a good-old-boy world.
“We play politics in a really hardball manner in South Carolina,” said Katon Dawson, former chairman of the state’s Republican Party. “If you can survive the South Carolina political climate, you’re prepared for Washington, and you’re prepared to take on the Russians.”
Dawson remembered the first time he saw Haley handing out Krispy Kreme doughnuts at her daughter’s school in an early campaign event. “She was this different-looking woman — nice looking — and I’m not surprised at her success. She can play ball with the good old boys.”
During Haley’s first run for governor in 2010, a Republican state senator called her a “raghead,” newspaper cartoons published images of her in a burqa, and two Republican operatives made separate, unproven accusations they had sexual encounters with her, assertions she strongly denied. She had little support from fellow Republicans until endorsements by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party helped propel her to a surprise victory.
Cunning political operator
“She is one of the savviest, most cunning and cut-throat political operators we’ve ever seen,” said Bakari Sellers, a Democrat who served with Haley in the state Legislature and lost in a bid for lieutenant-governor to Haley’s ticket. He opposed her policies but came to like her personally. “A lot of the boys decided they were going to draw outside the lines, and they attacked her in ways that were not ethical, not right. If Nikki Haley felt any of that negativity, if it wore her down or beat her up, it never showed.”
Indeed, during a recent appearance at the Women in the World Summit, held the day she had denounced Syria at the United Nations, Haley serenely ignored jeers and hisses from a partisan crowd.
During her tenure as governor, she emphasised job creation and wooed corporations with promises of low taxes and union defiance. Although she had stayed away from the charged issue of the Confederate flag during her first five years in office, she backed removing it from the State House building after the Dylann Roof massacre in Charleston. Opponents called her opportunistic, but she won admiring national headlines.
This combination of fiscal conservatism, focus on jobs and cultural inclusivity could allow her to position herself for higher office.
Haley also knows how to deploy her gender to advantage. She once delighted South Carolinians with threats to use her high heels to kick unions and won applause at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last month by threatening to take the same heels to critics of Israel.
“She’s coming out like gangbusters and taking very strong and powerful positions — that’s the kind of thing a woman needs to do to be seen as credible,” said Monika L. McDermott, an associate professor of political science at Fordham.
She and Walsh both say that gender stereotypes can give Republican women an advantage if they run for president. “They have the femininity automatically by being women, so they’re considered caring,” McDermott said.
There is a risk, though, in relying on crowd-pleasing one-liners. Haley has stumbled on substance: connecting the administration’s refugee ban with the London terror attack, carried out by a native Briton, for example.
Political scientists warn that she will have to demonstrate far more knowledge of foreign affairs. “In many ways, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin had similar levels of knowledge about how the world works — she was enormously punished for it,” said Mirya R. Holman, an assistant professor of political science at Tulane.
Holman emerged from this election pessimistic about female presidential candidates and national security. Drawing on the American National Elections Study of 2016 voters and controlling for gender, education, income and region, she plotted a graph showing that white Republicans and Democrats who were the most worried about terrorism were less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. “If you see the world as a dangerous place, we need this strong father, strong man to protect us,” she said.
It is of course a long way from the first months at the United Nations to a presidential stage. South Carolina political watchers believe that as a next step, Haley might well try to succeed or challenge Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, in 2020.
Along the way, Haley will have to navigate yet another pitfall: the downside of her newfound visibility. This is a president who has repeatedly bridled at subordinates who he feels are too much in the limelight. “I don’t expect her leash to be that long,” Sellers said. “One thing you can’t do with Donald Trump is outshine him.”
— New York Times News Service
Susan Chira is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times
