MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-01-31 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] PResidential Electoion
|
Opinion | Nikki Haley Should Go for Broke
Peggy Noonan
7–8 minutes
This shouldn’t even be a question.
A great party is trying to produce its presidential nominee. Donald
Trump is the leader in the contest so far, and looks likely to be the
victor. But the cycle has just started (61 delegates allocated, 2,368 to
go) and the party isn’t united, it’s split, roughly 50/50 pro-Trump and not.
Nikki Haley is right to stay in and fight. No one has the right to shut
her down. She’s stumping in her home state, South Carolina, and getting
a lot of advice. I remember George H.W. Bush at a difficult point in the
GOP primaries in 1988, after he lost Iowa. All his friends were saying,
“You have to show you’re strong!” He’d listen politely, thank them, now
and then ask if they had any specific ideas on how to show “strength.”
They’d wave their hands and flounder. Finally Bush growled to his aides:
How do they want me to show it? Maybe I’ll get off the plane, go up to
the greeting party and slug ’em in the face, plaster ’em, maybe that’ll
do it.
That’s from memory, thus no quote marks, but I think of it when the
subject is the well-meaning but useless advice candidates under pressure
receive.
For useful advice I turned to my friend Landon Parvin, savant and
veteran Washington speechwriter, who tore himself away from work to
offer practical thoughts.
Go for broke, Landon said; there’s only one subject now and it’s Mr.
Trump. Go at him, make it new. “Feel the freedom of your situation,” he
says to Ms. Haley. “Self-respect is at issue. You’re not slinking off
under pressure. There is something glorious about a last stand.”
“You alone now carry the banner. Speak up for all the Republicans who
have been demeaned, diminished and threatened by Trump. He can no longer
hurt you. Pick up the sword. You don’t have to give Shakespeare’s
band-of-brothers speech but live it!”
Lean into being a woman. “The woman card is untapped by Republican women
because they don’t like identity politics.” But the suburbs will
appreciate it, and Mr. Trump is going after you as a woman, insulting
how you present yourself, calling you “birdbrain.” “You were once in the
Little Miss Bamberg, S.C., pageant and sang ‘This Land Is Your Land.’
That’s a beautiful thing for the daughter of immigrants. Trump
desecrates such images, this man who owned the Miss USA pageant and
grabbed women by certain parts. This is bigger than you. Speak up for
Republican women.”
It’s OK to note you beat Joe Biden in the polls while with Mr. Trump
it’s a toss-up, fine to point out that Mr. Trump has lost a step, but be
careful. “Do it with humor or you’ll look like you want to stand on his
ventilator tube.”
But the issue is Mr. Trump’s nature. Start, Landon says, with something
like this: “Remember when Trump said he could shoot somebody in the
middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him? Well, if he
would try to shoot somebody in the middle of the street here in South
Carolina, we would return fire. And that is what I intend to do today.”
“Don’t attack with anger, just quote the terrible, terrible things he
says about specific people and larger groups. It is not right what he
says, and on some level most Trump supporters know it. Make fun of his
self-importance and self-regard. Take on the Great Pumpkin far away in
Mar-a-Lago. Show that he’s out of control, that he has no rails, no
boundaries. Quote the past few days’ overnight rants on social media.
Let the audience draw the conclusion about whether this man should be
returned to the presidency.” Quote his former chiefs of staff and
cabinet secretaries who say he has no business in the Oval Office. “Let
that settle in.”
More: “Don’t be strident, don’t strain your voice, don’t try too hard.
When I was writing for Ronald Reagan, I would give him a sure-fire,
tough applause line, and he would often deliver it gently, seeking no
applause. And yet it landed, and he looked the stronger, the bigger and
the more genial for it. Don’t yell at Trump, be sad for him.”
“Let me talk about stereotypes, as unfair as they are, because some
voters think in them. You are the Asian girl in the front of the class
with her hand up. You’re smart, you did the work. Trump is the blond
jock in the back, cracking jokes and popping gum. Gently smack that gum
out of his mouth. Have some fun going after him, not in a Chris Christie
perturbed way but as someone who seems to enjoy the give and take of
battle.”
Another thought: Admit you are not as entertaining or maybe exciting as
he is, but that’s OK, you’re running not to entertain but to lead. A
rabid squirrel in a chemistry lab is exciting to watch but can do a lot
of damage. You believe in old-fashioned values like professionalism and
capability. “I am here to capably close the border. Wouldn’t that be the
real excitement? I’m here to capably force the executive agencies to end
their woke, partisan nonsense. Wouldn’t it be exciting if somebody got
that done?” “Doing the real job of the presidency so that the American
people benefit actually is exciting.” Perhaps one day when she worked
for Mr. Trump she saw the blubbery self-pity kick in; perhaps she wanted
to shake him by the shoulders and say snap out of it, we have a country
to save.
Mr. Trump is currently in a rage cycle and Ms. Haley is likely expecting
a new nickname—Tricky Nikki, whatever. But nothing is below Mr. Trump
and he may go more off-color than that. Staff can respond, but a
reporter will catch Ms. Haley going into an event and demand reaction.
Landon suggests, in a confiding tone, “Yes. I heard Stormy Daniels gave
him that.”
Don’t be afraid of pulling the heart strings. You’re home in the state
that made you. The people you’re talking to are your fellow Republicans.
Whatever they decide you’ll always remember you were a child there, a
student, a young bride. You are of them. Landon likes “When I walk into
that old White House, I will be thinking of one of our state mottos,
‘While I breathe.’ While I breathe, I’ll be thanking you for how you
prepared me for this moment.”
“You can’t go wrong with gratitude, and grace for that matter, which are
concepts her opponent does not grasp.”
Landon once told me of a difference between writing for women in public
life and for men. Men like to tell personal and emotional stories
because they think it means they’re sensitive. Women are more likely to
fear it will make them look weak—“She got all weepy.”
Ms. Haley, he suspects, may be reticent in part because she was trained
as an accountant—just the numbers, please. His advice: “Slow down your
pace, soften your voice, tell an honest story. That is what people want,
not the grandiosity of the man you are running against. Nikki, it’s time
to go to your core.”
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
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