Politicians don't like tough questions. There are just too many opportunities to say something that will irritate someone, somewhere…and never hear the end of it.
But that doesn't mean they are any better at handling softball questions, either. Case in point: former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who managed to bungle and mangle a simple question about the Civil War.
Mike Murphy's breakdown of the incident is about as good as it gets:
1.) Frozen smile in place, Haley listens to an audience member's question about the cause of the Civil War.
2.) Haley does an immediate 180-degree spin and walks away from the questioner. This is a real tell; for her, it's fight or flight time. But alas her exit is blocked by a clump of stage-prop town hall attendees. Trapped!
3.) Her CPU spins up. She needs, sadly, a few seconds to think of an answer that won't offend anybody, since that is the core programing deep inside the Haley-bot.
4.) She spins back toward the questioner, now a bit farther away, and makes a standard lame town hall joke “well, don't come with an easy question!” The joke dies with an awful thud since — apparently unlike Haley — the audience all got through the 6th grade and knows the answer: slavery. Haley propels herself out of the deadly no laugh zone and starts spraying out a speedy word salad about…
5.) “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.” Huh?
Yes, Haley backed-and-filled a bit later, though not without a swipe that the whole thing was because the questioner was a “plant” intended to make her look bad.
She managed to do that all by herself.
But here's the thing…
Haley was wrong (the South fought to dissolve the Union over…slavery) and eventually said so. It took a little bit of time, but she did it.
Compared to the Big Unrepentant Lie that powers the frontrunning Trump campaign (for those who've forgotten: that the 2020 election was stolen), Haley's correction stands as profound exception and model of probity. A sad commentary on the state, character, and outlook of what used to be the Party of Lincoln (you remember: the president who fought to save the Union…and end chattel slavery).
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
