My First And Probably Last Post About Nikki Haley's Presidential Bid

Getting this out of the way as early as possible ... also, "lots of Americans hate me" is the new black in presidential politics.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.

I haven’t done a Zoom Chat in a few weeks … so let’s do one tomorrow! I’ll kick things off at 12:30, and we’ll talk presidential politics, the debt limit, why “Everything, Everywhere All At Once” should win the Oscar for best picture, and the Celtics are my pick to win the NBA title this year … and anything else that comes up. The link is here.

Good Luck With All That

Associated Press/Meg Kinnard

My first book, published nearly 15 years ago, looked at the history of presidential campaign speechmaking. If I ever do another edition of the book, I can assure you that Nikki Haley’s presidential announcement speech will not make it in.

If you want to spend 25 minutes that you’re not going to get back, you can check it out here. But, it’s really not worth your while because a) Nikki Haley will almost certainly not be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, and b) this was a remarkably conventional, uninspiring, poorly-written speech.

As a former speechwriter, I realize I’m biased on the topic, but the key to speechwriting is to show, not tell. When Haley talks about “too many families paying too much for groceries,” “too many mothers looking frantically for baby formula,” “too many small businesses who can’t afford rent,” and “too many drugs flooding our cities,” these sound like throwaway lines. Show me the emotion; create an image that magnifies the point. Talk about the struggle of families sitting around the dinner table in anguish that they can’t make ends meet; the fears of a business owner staring at a mountain of bills and an empty store wondering whether they can keep things going; the human impact of the drug trade on communities, neighborhood, and families.

Take, for example, Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union speech. Admittedly, these addresses are largely paint-by-numbers speeches, but just consider a few passages:

“Too many of you lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling, wondering what will happen if your spouse gets cancer, your child gets sick, or if something happens to you. Will you have the money to pay your medical bills? Will you have to sell the house?”

… We’re making sure that every community has access to affordable, high-speed internet. No parent should have to drive to a McDonald’s parking lot so their kid can do their homework online.

… Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you, watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away.

One of the powerful and evocative images that Biden uses when talking about COVID is “empty chairs at the dining room table.”

These won’t win any rhetorical awards, but they are more than just a rote recitation of woes.

Haley’s speech is just uninspired drivel — and truth be told, she’s not a very compelling speaker. There’s a cadence to her voice that is slightly grating but, even worse, feels performative. Many speakers put on an act when they talk, but the good ones figure out how to come across as genuine. Biden is very good at this. When Trump delivers speeches off teleprompters, it’s terrible because he’s just reading lines and not being himself — and that’s obvious. Haley isn’t that bad, but she’s definitely not presidential material.

Substantively, her speech is not much better. Haley says at one point that self-loathing in America about the country’s racist past is “worse than any pandemic,” which will likely come as a surprise to the families of the more than one million Americans who have died from COVID-19. What’s Haley’s evidence that America is not a racist country? That she, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was elected governor of South Carolina. Of course, that’s not evidence; it’s an anecdote. She says the American people are not full of hate but full of love … but again, here’s a place where showing that, rather than insisting it’s true, would help. I guess I’m supposed to take her word for it — and most Republican voters will — but it’s emblematic of how uninspiring she is as a politician.

On foreign policy, she says that in Communist China, America faces the “strongest and most disciplined enemy in history,” which will likely come as a surprise to the remaining US veterans who fought Nazis in the Ardennes and Japanese soldiers in Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

Finally, there is this:

“I aim to move America upward to freedom and strength.”

Here’s an exclusive video of my reaction to hearing this line.

When you are directly and earnestly evoking a legendary Simpsons joke, you’ve really accomplished something.

The Great Divider

However, there’s one sentence from Haley’s speech that deserves even further dissection.