(Feb. 19) 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.”
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.”…. [The full column is here.]
