View: Why Nikki Haley could be the most dangerous president?
Ron DeSantis proved to be a capable campaigner and looked poised to defeat Donald Trump in New Hampshire and beyond, we would be facing a multitude of left-leaning essays on a single theme: «Why DeSantis is actually more dangerous than Trump.»
In this world, the only threat to Trump in New Hampshire is Nikki Haley, and her candidacy doesn't look built to last much beyond that primary. But in the spirit of slipping in your controversial opinions while you can, and because she might yet be Trump's running mate, here is my own fear: A Haley presidency could be more dangerous than a second Trump term.
This is not because I think that Haley is an authoritarian threat to American democracy. She is obviously not, and her nomination and election would have the salutary effect of re-normalizing Republican politics on important questions like, «Should you contest a lost election by pushing for a constitutional crisis and whipping up an angry mob?»
But when the history of 21st-century American decline is written, the crucial chapter will focus not on Trump but on one of his predecessors, George W. Bush: a better man than Trump, a capable politician with a number of sound policies to his credit, but also the architect of a hubristic foreign policy whose disastrous effects continue to ripple through the country and the world.
The Iraq War and the slower, longer failure in Afghanistan didn't just begin the unraveling of the Pax Americana. They also discredited the American establishment at home, shattering the center-right and undermining the center-left, dissolving confidence in politicians, bureaucracies and even the military itself, while the war's social effects
