Haley's Comment

And the Vivifying Effects of Cowardly Columnists

All right, it was a slow news week. But I’m still scratching my head about Nikki Haley’s bizarre response at a New Hampshire town meeting to a question about the cause of the civil war. “Well, don’t come with an easy question,” She responded, then asked the questioner what he thought the cause was. He replied, appropriately, that she was the candidate and it was her job to answer the question. And then this…whatever it is…issued forth from her mouth:

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn't need to tell you how to live your life. They don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.”

To which one can only say, huh? For one thing, it really was an “easy” question. Slavery caused the civil war. A more evasive, but not implausible, answer might have been: there were differing opinions about the limits of states rights. (The right in question was, of course, the right to own another human being.) The next day, Haley corrected herself:

"Of course the Civil War was about slavery," she said. "We know that. That's the easy part of it."

Ok, what was the hard part?

Now, Haley is an accomplished politician—the most adept running for President in either party right now. She has been notable for not making gaffes during the course of the campaign. Indeed, her response was notable for another reason: It violated the Michael Kinsley rule of gaffery. It was not the accidental commission of a truth. It was the accidental commission of witless obfuscation. Haley is no racist. To state the obvious: She is an Asian woman who married a white guy; her daughter married a black guy. Her family looks like America, as they say. But what on earth was happening here? Some theories:

1. She wasn’t paying full attention to the question. Campaigning is exhausting; in a town meeting, you need to be totally focused on the person in front of you, no matter what your next stratagem or event—or chance to take a nap—might be. Brain fog is common on the stump. In this case, the question was unusual: If it were about immigration or abortion, she would have rolled her usual 90-second taped response. All politicians have them. But it was historical and off the beaten campaign trail and, yes, it was easy—maybe a bit too easy, in a very serious way. She may have been wondering if she missed a nuance, which may be why she asked the questioner what his answer would be. He wouldn’t play, so she fudged and floundered. This isn’t the most satisfying explanation for Haley’s weirdness, but it may be the most likely.

2. She was too clever by three-quarters. She was struggling to find some higher ground—and there is a breed of Republicans, call it the Federalist Society variant, who like to ruminate on grander principles. You know, like: is this country a republic or a democracy? Where do individual rights end and government responsibilities begin? Later she said, foolishly, that the questioner was a Democratic plant. Again, huh? You mean, a Democrat asking a Republican-style question? Confusing.

3. She was trying not to piss off the Trumpers. This is the most common explanation among Democrats and, to my ears, the least likely. There is a brutalist faction in the Republican Party that does not like to acknowledge the ugly truths of American history. Simply stating that slavery existed—legally!—and that it was unspeakably evil is unpatriotic to such people. Best not to dwell on that. But you simply can’t talk about the civil war without mentioning slavery; even Ron DeSantis understands that. Haley was speaking in New Hampshire, where her game plan has to be moderation. Independents can vote in the Republican primary. She will need them to win. Her answer was bound to turn them off. If fudging slavery to placate the borderline, moveable Trumpers—who may represent 25% of the party—was her motivation, Haley is not only craven but stupid. I don’t think she’s either. This was vapor lock, not chicanery.

But she is playing a dangerous game, trying to separate herself from Tump—but not so much as to mortally offend the Trumpers. It is clever politics; you can’t go all Chris Christie and expect to win the nomination. Indeed, the biggest question I have about Haley’s candidacy was made plain when she elaborated on her civil war answer the next day:

“I knew 50 percent of South Carolinians saw the Confederate flag as heritage and tradition. The other 50 percent saw it as slavery and hate. My job wasn’t to judge either side. My job is to get them to see the best of themselves and go forward,” Haley said. “Leaders aren’t supposed to decide who’s right or wrong or good or bad. … What a leader does is know where people are, and communicate their way forward so that you can get to a better place.”

Actually, this was another classic Haley answer: Her job was to “get them to see the best of themselves” but not to “decide who’s right or wrong.” Excuse me? How does that work? She’s implying, but not saying, that the “best” and “right” thing was to take down the battle flag of slavery.

I suppose she’d argue that politics forces you to pick the right moment to do the right thing. She managed to lower the Confederate flag after the racist Charleston church massacre. But that sort of slightly-amoral finesse is not always possible, or advisable. Sometimes, in order to be credible, you have to take an unpopular position. As Ed Koch once said, “If you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on twelve out of twelve issues, see a psychiatrist.” Koch had learned that lesson the hard way. He lost the 1982 New York gubernatorial primary to Mario Cuomo because Cuomo took a wildly unpopular position, against the death penalty. People I interviewed would say, “I disagree with Cuomo on that, but at least he’s honest.” A good part of Trump’s credibility with his flock is that he is willing—indeed, delighted—to say obnoxious, impolitic things like questioning John McCain’s heroism. He is deplorable, to coin a phrase, but not synthetic.

Actually, one of the most important jobs of a leader is to do exactly what Haley says it isn’t: to make a determination what is right and wrong on the most basic moral issues. Sometimes it is downright improper to say “There are good people on both sides,” as Orange Jesus did after the fascist march in Charlottesville, Va. Sometimes boundaries need to be set. Bigots need to be called out.

Even our greatest leaders struggle and fail at this. Abraham Lincoln danced around slavery unconscionably, deep into the civil war. Franklin Roosevelt blocked Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi genocide from entering the US. In Haley’s case, her quest for common ground—on abortion, for example—is one of her strengths as a candidate, but it may not make her a great leader. I want her to tell me something true I don’t want to hear.

But maybe not quite yet. Haley’s gaffe was awful, but not dispositive. I’m rooting hard for her to beat Trump. She’s the only Republican who can thread that minuscule needle. But she needs to be smart about it; she can be courageous after she shocks the world on Super Tuesday.

Silly Columnist Watch

There’s nothing like idiot myopia from the commentariat to get my juices flowing, especially after a long solstice nap. The op-ed page of The Washington Post was a tonic today. On the left, we have Perry Bacon; on the right, Hugh Hewitt.

Bacon opens with this:

The United States’ universities are far from perfect. But what’s really driving the attacks on them are ideological and policy differences. College students and professors are often among the most vocal people in the United States challenging power structures and ideas that most politicians don’t dare question, from the usefulness of police departments to the virtues of capitalism to U.S. support for Israel. The war on colleges and universities is really a war on the left-wing and at times very radical ideas that can thrive on campuses, unlike most institutions in American life.

Leaving aside the question of what sort of fool questions the “usefulness” of police departments, Bacon is right that a lot of the distemper is ideological. Conservative alumni don’t like Hamas rallies. But he completely avoids the most reasonable complaint from critics of the academic left: that it is profoundly illiberal. That it cancels speakers—and sometimes professors—who don’t toe the daft-leftist line; that it posits a juvenile form of “sensitivity,” where students can be “protected” from hearing unpleasant truths.

The problem isn’t that critical race theory is taught on college campuses, but that it is taught uncritically—and that you can be punished if you don’t quite agree that racism in American is immutable, or that the world is sliced simply between colonizers and the oppressed. Sloppy thinking is unavoidable in academia—antic theorizing can lead to embarrassing conclusions, especially when it isn’t exposed to the harsh light of reality. But what we have on too many campuses is the self-righteous celebration of sloppy thinking and the cancellation of those who raise legitimate, nuanced questions about fad dogmas. It is a grievous problem that is enfeebling the American intellect. Bacon also defends Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs without noting that responsible critics make a very convincing case that they are, by definition, bigoted and unfair because they institutionalize that which we should be striving to overcome: the notion that identity matters more than merit, more than excellence.

Bacon is relentless in his leftoid constriction. Hugh Hewitt can, at times, make a reasonable conservative case, but he empretzles himself in his frequent attempts to render Donald Trump something other than the authoritarian wannabe that he is. (Fox News has a similar problem.) Hewitt tends to skid off the rails when he attempts phony on-the-other-handism, where one of the hands is limp and the other a fist:

Biden’s presidency was marked indelibly by the disastrous 2021 exit from Afghanistan. Add in Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s Oct. 7 barbaric rampage in Israel. And the collapse of anything resembling a secure border with Mexico. What do you get? Countless voters who will conclude that not just the United States but the entire West are too reluctant to firmly oppose the forces of chaos and totalitarianism. Yet other voters might welcome Biden’s approach to security matters, regarding it as a sign of measured, appropriate caution.

Hewitt’s analysis of the electoral divide is essentially correct, even if his division between “countless” hawkish voters and a minority of “other” dovish sorts is dead wrong. The interesting thing happening now is that the isolationist right and the pacifist left are congealing; there is very little appetite for overseas adventurism these days. What would Hewitt have done about Ukraine and Hamas? Wouldn’t it have been fair to note that Biden was following Donald Trump’s roadmap in Afghanistan? (I could argue that Afghanistan was going to end disastrously no matter what, but that’s another column.)

And if you’re going to accuse Biden and the West of being “too reluctant to firmly oppose the forces of chaos and totalitarianism,” which Hewitt clearly believes to be the case, you might propose what a plausible “firm” response might be. Send troops to Ukraine? Bomb Iran? Send drones to hit the fentanyl labs in Mexico? Make me an offer. A more forceful response might be appropriate, and Biden has clearly failed to deal with the Southern border, but we have had a dark and horrific record of military fecklessness from Vietnam to Iraq. Biden’s “measured, appropriate caution” has been prudent and welcome—especially when compared to the Putin-coddling, Bibi-bolstering (and Saudi buckraking) that would come with Trump.