Why Nikki Haley will be rarest of Trump appointees to exit with dignity

Nikki Haley also has been the face of misguided and cruel Trump initiatives, like cutting funds to the agency providing crucial assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees

“With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” Nikki Haley, the United Nations ambassador, memorably once snapped to a reporter, after a senior — and, unsurprisingly, male — White House official attributed a tough position she’d announced on sanctioning Russia to “momentary confusion.”

While Ms. Haley might not have gotten confused herself, she could at times present a confusing picture. She could talk as bluntly as the president himself about the failings of the United Nations system, and yet, more quietly, she proved a practitioner of multilateral diplomacy.

In an administration that prizes lock-step loyalty, Ms. Haley managed to hold to at least some of her own priorities, and as a result she appears to be that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact. She announced on Tuesday that she would step down at the end of the year.

Ms. Haley, who is expected to pursue the presidency one day, may eventually find herself having to defend facilitating some of President Trump’s worst policies and instincts. But she will also be able to point to more constructive roles she played. Indeed, a replacement in her mold may be the best to hope for from Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Trump’s America First policy is a harsh rejection of multilateralism, many United Nations diplomats valued Ms. Haley as a pragmatic envoy who could explain the president to a world confused by the chaos in Washington. She also developed a good relationship with António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, and helped avoid what could have been a breakdown between the United States and the United Nations.

She protected some of the American investment in the United Nations against the most drastic budget cuts sought by the White House, while also working to reform the United Nations bureaucracy, a longtime American bipartisan goal and also a priority for Mr. Guterres. She also managed the effort to pass tough new sanctions on North Korea.

She maintained some independence from the president on relations with Russia and other matters. She was visibly dismayed in August 2017, for example, when the president said he could not rule out a “military option” to respond to unrest in Venezuela.

But Ms. Haley also has been the face of misguided and cruel Trump initiatives, like cutting funds to the agency providing crucial assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees.

On her watch, the United States has withdrawn from the Paris agreement on climate change and the United Nations Human Rights Council and has not done enough to push back against Israeli abuses in Gaza.

Ms. Haley has taken a hard line against Iran as Mr. Trump abrogated the deal to control its nuclear weapons, and she has warned that the United States will be “taking names” of countries that don’t support its agenda.

Like most Republican leaders, Ms. Haley performed a dizzying pirouette during the 2016 presidential campaign. Then the governor of South Carolina, she started out attacking Mr. Trump as “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president.” Once his rise seemed certain, she helped make it so by enthusiastically defending him.

With no background in foreign affairs — a deficit for a presidential candidate — she accepted the United Nations appointment and became one of only a half-dozen women in a cabinet-level job. An Indian-American, she also became one of the even smaller number of people of color at the top of the administration.

Ms. Haley quickly positioned herself as the equal of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Because of his tentative demeanor and rare public appearances, Mr. Tillerson essentially ceded his role as America’s leading foreign policy voice to Ms. Haley.

Once Mike Pompeo replaced Mr. Tillerson and John Bolton, a former United Nations envoy who detests the organization, became White House national security adviser, they asserted more influence. There have been conflicts reported between Ms. Haley and Mr. Bolton, in particular.

She was also the first American ambassador to experience the indignity of seeing her president laughed at during the annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly, a reaction in line with the plunge in America’s international standing under Mr. Trump.

Ms. Haley has navigated the political shoals of the Trump administration better than many of her colleagues, escaping the demeaning tweets the president meted out when his appointees broke ranks, as she sometimes did.

And while the president was angered by her announcement about sensible sanctions over the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally Syria, it turned out she was describing a decision that had been changed without anyone telling her. Her official scold, Larry Kudlow, the president’s economics adviser, admitted he was wrong.

“She was certainly not confused,” Mr. Kudlow said.

©2018 The New York Times News Service