Some thoughts about Nikki Haley's Civil War flub
Everyone is talking about it, so screw it, I'll chime in, too.
Well, Nikki Haley definitely did not win the “luck” lottery this week.
It’s deadly quiet with precious little news and she goes and gives about the shittiest answer short of “it was about slavery and I think the South got screwed with its pants on” to the question at a New Hampshire town hall “what was the Civil War about?”
Here’s what Haley said (if you haven’t already read it a million times):
“I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley had said Wednesday in a visit to Berlin — the first of five events in the Granite State as she attempts to close the gap with Republican front-runner Donald Trump ahead of next month’s primary.
The former South Carolina governor then asked the voter who had asked her about the Civil War what he thought the cause was, to which the voter responded, “I’m not running for president.”
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people,” she added.
The voter criticized her for not mentioning slavery in her answer. “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery,” the voter said.
Here’s how Haley tried to clean it up (also if you haven’t already read this a million times):
“I mean, of course the Civil War was about slavery,” Haley told radio host Jack Heath Thursday morning.
“But what’s the lesson in all of that?” she continued. “That we need to make sure that every person has freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything they want to be without anyone or government getting in the way. That was the goal of what that was at. Yes, I know it was about slavery. I’m from the South, of course I know it’s about slavery.”
She also added in that the questioner was a Democratic “plant” (no shit, Sherlock; you still have to be prepared to deal with those if you’re running for President!)
So… this is bad. Here are the reasons why, in rough order of priority:
Haley’s mega donors are going to absolutely hate this. They may suck it up on the basis that she’s still a million times better than Trump (true), two million times better than Vivek (also true), can get actual Republican votes unlike Chris Christie (true), and can actually get more than 15 percent of the vote in a GOP primary unlike Ron DeSantis (also true). But she and her SuperPAC may lose money over this. And that will happen at a time when she really needs more money. No bueno.
This makes it tougher for Chris Christie to drop out and endorse her without egg on face— which she does need to have happen, I think, to win New Hampshire. Yes, yes, if Christie declines to do that because of concerns about egg on face over these remarks, he will personally be handing Trump the 2024 GOP nomination— and let’s not forget he did quite a bit to hand Trump the nomination in 2016. But let’s remember, this is Chris Christie we’re talking about. He could make the wrong move here for egotistical reasons dressed up as “principle” and Haley just gave him a nice big excuse to use.
This is going to make Chris Sununu’s week pretty shitty. He’s been out putting all his political capital on the line to deliver a victory for Haley in his state, and not by 0.1 percent. Is he going to continue to do that, depending on the ongoing coverage and fallout? I think Sununu has a lot of balls and a lot of staying power relative to 99 percent of politicians, but he is still a politician at the end of the day. No politician wants to cuddle up to someone or something abjectly toxic, as seen through their particular eyes.
If Haley somehow does win the GOP nomination, the Biden campaign and the DNC have a great attack ad already teed up now. This will hurt her with Black voters. It will hurt her with a bunch of more socially and racially conscious Never Trump voters. It will hurt her with electability voters (though there aren’t a lot of those in today’s GOP).
But I think all of the above is really stating the obvious. I think the tougher question that I’m going to attempt to answer, since I purportedly do political strategizing for a living, is “what does Haley do to draw a line under this?” I ask that bearing in mind that she took many, many hours to apparently formulate what was a pretty weak-sauce effort at a cleanup (see answer number two above, which was coupled with “the questioner was a Democratic plant”).
I’m generally a big believer in the concept that the truth is usually the best route where a fuckup of this level has occurred. Haley could try coming out and telling what I think is the truth, which is something like this:
“Every candidate who runs for President is going to say or do something stupid and I just had my turn. As I said after the fact, of course I know the Civil War was about slavery. I’m from South Carolina. But because I’m from South Carolina, I’m going to be honest— irrespective of my view that yes, it was about slavery, I’ve been acclimated and conditioned to operating in a political environment where precious few people will actually say that and instead voters prefer we divert to talking about differences of opinion over liberties, states’ rights and so on. The reality is that running on very little sleep, something short of normal meals, and too much caffeine and adrenaline, I defaulted to an answer that worked exceedingly well for dancing on my tip toes on the head of a pin in South Carolina for many, many years, but that wasn’t an honest answer and most voters know wasn’t an honest answer. I should have given a straight answer, which would have been ‘it was about slavery, which inherently involved the subordination of individual liberties to states’ rights— states’ rights being the ‘cause’ that some of our fellow Americans prefer to focus in on, many of them in my home state.’ What we should be thinking about today is how we advance individual liberties, instead of subordinating them to the rights of government, 150+ years on from the Civil War. That’s not a discussion that every presidential candidate wants to have, but it is a discussion I want to have even if I utterly garbled an attempt to introduce the topic.”
Can Americans handle that truth? I don’t know.
On the one hand, we say we want “straight talk” and “real keeping” from our politicians.
In 2016, we elected a President who had zero filter whatsoever— but who, in one of his more memorable moments, offered one of the more insincere apologies/explanations I’ve ever seen for his “grab them by the pussy” comments, and apparently that was good enough for enough voters (albeit in a contest against Hillary Clinton, who I still think more voters at the time rated as a liar and a fraud than they did Donald Trump). In 2008, we rejected the King of Straight Talk, John McCain, in favor of a guy whose policy platform and retort to every critique was basically “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” (even if what he was proposing was not remotely feasible having regard to simple things like the laws of physics). This was largely a rejection of George W. Bush, who was generally seen as not having been straight with the US public. But it was also pretty explicitly a rejection of easily understood facts like “it will take a considerable amount of time to actually withdraw from Iraq because of, well, physics,” taxes would go up on people earning exactly $250,000 a year under Obama, and that “Hope” and “Change” were not in fact actionable policies.
So maybe we don’t want straight talk. Maybe Haley should ignore the above paragraph and handle this in a different way.
I do a fair amount of crisis communications in my day job and one of the things that I find works most well when your client really steps in it is… [cue dramatic music] CHANGE THE FUCKING SUBJECT.
Now, this is going to be awfully difficult for Haley to do.
First of all, it’s a quiet week. There’s just not a lot to change the subject to, until we start having New Year’s Eve celebrations from around the world to broadcast.
Second of all, if there were ever a time when Chris LaCivita needed to duct tape Donald Trump’s mouth shut, take his phone, and probably tie him to his bed where he can sleep away several days comfortably and without saying a peep, it would be now. This is a tough task for LaCivita, but I rate his chances as decent. That’s bad news for Haley.
Third, Haley’s people cannot be emailing cable news producers about other stories right now. If they do, the fact that they’re trying to change the subject becomes the story. “Haleyworld in Hell” becomes the story (even moreso than it already is).
But someone out there who is a Haley friend needs to get someone with good cable news contacts pitching cable news producers on spending way more time on these kinds of stories:
Orcas are flocking to Southern California waters. One bloody, awe-inspiring spectacle shows why
Side note: Anything to do with aliens, Sasquatch, or other things in this vein will also do just fine. Also, everyone loves funny or heart-warming animal stories.
Does Haley’s team have some outside allies who can do this? Who knows. Note: I am not personally volunteering.
But I suspect changing the subject will be the most efficient way of addressing this.
Then, Haley needs to get ready to deal with this topic when it inevitably comes up in the next debate. Come up with a tight, 30-second answer that conveys “yeah, obvs it was about slavery, not my best town hall moment, but I’m here tonight to talk about how we expand individual liberty— the thing that was really at stake in the Civil War, whereas these guys want to talk about a town hall gaffe because they have nothing else to say.”
What I suspect will actually happen: Haley will have to ride this out, and will dabble in a combination of trying to explain it away (won’t work), praying for some change of subject, and circulating clips of other presidential contenders, maybe even Joe Biden, saying stupid shit about the Civil War. (Just please, please, please don’t let it be the one of Biden saying Delaware was a slave state— I remember everyone widely mocking that in 2008, but when we did an RNC fact check on it, oops, turns out that was one time when Biden said something that sounded mental and it was not actually bullshit.)
Anyway, good luck to Haley navigating this. I wouldn’t want to be her today.
Just remember: You’re on the national stage now, not the South Carolina stage. Act accordingly going forward!