Nikki Haley isn’t stupid.
She knows that slavery was the primary cause of the U.S. Civil War.
She just thinks that many people who vote in Republican presidential primaries either are ignorant regarding basic facts of American history or would prefer to pretend Americans never enslaved other human beings. And she wants their votes.
That is why she failed so miserably the other day on what, not so long ago, would have been a gimme question on an elementary school history quiz.
At a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire, an attendee asked Haley what caused the Civil War.
Haley’s response was maybe one cut above gibberish.
“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,” she said.
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”
So, the Civil War was about giving birth to a libertarian political party?
What toxic nonsense.
The truth is that, in the Civil War, it was the South that relied on the power of government to strip Black Americans of every liberty. The rebels who claimed to fight for freedom fought for the “freedom” to enslave other human beings.
This twisting of both history and logic has tragic consequences that linger today.
The white nationalists and other bigots former President Donald Trump tied to the Republican Party — the party of Lincoln — take it as an article of faith that they’re being oppressed if they are denied the opportunity to oppress other human beings.
If Haley’s difficult campaign to slide past Trump for the GOP presidential nomination is to succeed, she needs at least some of those MAGA votes to move her way. That’s why she was willing to sound like an idiot who never had cracked a book not written in crayon.
At least for a moment.
The backlash to her comments was so immediate and so fierce from both Democrats and Republicans that she quickly backtracked. At campaign events and during a radio interview, she acknowledged that slavery was the cause of the conflict that ended the lives of one out of every four American males between the ages of 15 and 45 over a four-year period.
Not that Haley’s retreat did much to quell the furor.
One of her rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, called her response to the initial question “word salad.”
Maybe he meant it as a compliment.
DeSantis delivered his own historical head-scratcher not long ago. He said slavery benefited the people who were enslaved because the work helped them develop necessary job skills.
That’s right.
A guy who aspires to lead the party of the Great Emancipator tried to get people to believe human slavery really was an early vocational training program.
It would be one thing if Haley and DeSantis were morons who didn’t know any better.
But they’re not.
Haley is a graduate of Clemson University. DeSantis did his undergraduate work at Yale and then studied law at Harvard.
Doubtless, those distinguished institutions didn’t teach U.S. history as if it were the stuff of fantasy.
No, these two ambitious politicians utter complete rubbish as a political calculation. They know such balderdash conforms with the prejudices of many voters — and they would rather confirm those prejudices than educate the people who hold them.
That’s politics.
But it isn’t leadership.
Leadership seeks to prod people to confront difficult realities. For that reason, great leaders do not run or hide from the truth.
The fact is that this country’s history with race is a tortured one. All too often, we Americans have failed to uphold the principles that we consider most sacred — starting with the notion that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We cannot make our peace with either past or present until we face that reality.
And it doesn’t seem like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis want to help with that.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students, where this commentary originally appeared. The opinions expressed by the author do not reflect the views of Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
