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What Did You Think of Nikki Haley’s Speech?
I just finished watching Nikki Haley’s speech this afternoon about removing the flag from the statehouse grounds. You can watch the video of it below. It’s about nine minutes or so, including applause breaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msmy-KAD6S4
I don’t usually watch political speeches. I don’t watch news shows. I don’t watch the news. For me, it’s all words on a screen and still pictures. So — while I’ve heard and seen Haley speak before — I don’t think it’s been more than a couple of times.
I’m also always pretty skeptical of politicians, what they do, what they say. One of the reasons that I don’t watch political speeches is that you can usually tell a politicians is lying simply because his lips are moving. I’m about as cynical as you can get when it comes to politicians, and consider almost all of them guilty until proven innocent.
That being said, I thought Haley knocked this one out of the park. The tone and delivery were perfect. This is an emotional and intense issue for both side in South Carolina, and she walked the line of respecting both points of view while taking the position she did. The speech writing and delivery were perfect in every way.
But that’s just me. I invite you to watch the speech. And please watch the whole thing. It was worth my nine minutes and it’ll be worth yours. And what do you think about how Haley did?
Published in Politics
@Spin: That’s interesting. You’re invited to elaborate.
I love those who draw parallels between Nazi symbols in Germany and the battle flag.
If we’re going to be like the Germans, and ban all symbols of the Confederacy, how about banning the Democrat party?
Not that it’s important to those on the “remove it” side of the argument, but we’re not talking about the CSA flag (“Stars and Bars”), but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Why is she not a candidate for President?
Re:@33: Army of Northern Virginia?! Then why is it even flying in SC? I’m not really being cheeky, just looking for a brief history lesson.
David,
Very good question. She may not have the name recognition or money but she could be a very attractive addition to the field.
Regards,
Jim
I think she struck a fine balance and strove to keep the dangerous “othering” of the Confederate soldiers from taking place. It was a really nice note to remind everyone that it was South Carolina’s decision and their decision alone. That was excellent. She is not a great speaker but I really liked the content of the speech.
Well, you would have to ask her.
I haven’t followed her closely since soon after she was first elected and am not an expert on her record, but she has a difficult job where she is. The governor of South Carolina simply has less power than the governor of, say, Wisconsin. Weak veto power and lots of positions that are elected separately. Add to that an unhealthy dose of infighting in a state Republican Party that takes its majority for granted. It’s not the best job with which to build the kind of resume a governor wants when running for president.
That said, she’s probably on everyone’s VP list, and moved higher up yesterday.
Plenty of South Carolinians fought in Lee’s army. ‘Twas better to fight the Northern aggressors away from home.
The flag on the SC Capital ground was raised by a Democratic governor in 1962 as a symbol of segregation. Why anyone who is not a Democrat wants to defend it is beyond me.
And as of the year 2000 it sits above a Confederate War Dead memorial. It’s not on the capitol building.
Aww, Fricosis, I didn’t know you cared! (blush). As for banning the Democratic Party, sure, I’m up for that! They have managed to slither out of their Dixiecrat years and get away with historical amnesia, not just for the 1850s but for the 1950s.
I was also moved and impressed by it, for the reasons most on this thread have mentioned.
But I was at the same time unnerved, as I often am, by the all-too-soon and in my view utterly inappropriate references to the “healing process” in the immediate wake of a mass murder. I understand that I seem to be unique among Americans in being appalled by this phrase, so perhaps I’m reacting to an offense no one else would take, and perhaps my reaction is irrelevant. I’m sure people who didn’t know the victims are already “healing,” but all they were is “shocked and horrified by a news item.” Those who were killed will never heal. They are dead.
I can’t speak for their families, but if anyone were to speak of the “healing process” in the immediate wake of the death (no less the murder) of someone I loved, I would find it not only offensive, but cruel. It suggests such a warped view of the nature of grief — which is, as far as I can tell, something from which people don’t heal. They just learn to live with it.
The idea that the immediate survivors would already be bustling along the path of “healing” — this when the blood of their mother and fathers and sisters and brothers and children has barely dried? Am I the only one who finds this ritual expression both jarring and weirdly detached from human emotion? I don’t blame Haley for using it, since it’s obviously a widely accepted thing to say, but surely it’s a twisted thing to say, too.
Although I support the removal of the Confederate flag, I dislike that it is being done in the context of a mob rush to do something. It gives the mob momentum and not all of it in the right direction.
It’s not just you.
On 9/12/01, I went to a packed mass at the nearby church (this was back when I was Catholic). The priest asked parishioners to share what they felt. I can’t remember the exact answers offered, but they orbited closely around “hurt,” “confused,” and “saddened.” After hoping someone else would pipe up, I said — loudly — “enraged.”
My comment was the only one he didn’t address. I’m still sore about it.
Good points. I feel embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of this in this way before. I guess I am so accustomed to hearing the “healing process” phrase that I never thought about it. It seemed to be a routine verbal curtsy that is reflexively used after tragedies.
Such talk, if spoken sincerely and literally, would be a kind of moral cretinism for the reasons you gave. But I don’t think the “healing process” phrase was directed toward grieving family members. I think the intent of such a phrase is partly to prompt everybody who isn’t actually a grieving family member to mentally move beyond dwelling on the tragedy. More darkly, I suspect that using this phrase might be intended to forestall reprisals.
John, Claire, & Tom,
This is a very good description of what the phrase has become. I always disliked such amorphous phrases myself. The problem that we face momentarily is that Obama & company should have been reacting with some rage for the past 6 years to many micro-genocides both foreign and domestic. If suddenly he turns and tries to show rage for this one case, you can rest assured it is pure political theater.
Haley did exactly what she should have done. She made the “routine verbal curtsy” made a small concession to the feeling of blacks in her state and then asked everyone for patience. Now if Obama tries to turn this into a political football he is going to look like the cold, ruthless, greedy pol that he really is.
Regards,
Jim
I think I agree with the larger point, but this was more personal to South Carolinians than I think you relate here.
To this evil man, the choice of victims was incidental; this was an attack on South Carolina. He sought, deliberately, to rip apart the social fabric of the state. He failed — but it takes only a little imagination and a quick glance at recent history to picture how things might have gone very, very differently. He failed, but he reopened the old wounds of the most painful part of South Carolina’s past and stirred up old tensions. I think “healing” is as good a word as any in our vocabulary to describe what is needed.
But what is healing, anyway? Not that we go back as if nothing had happened. If you amputate my arm, healing does not mean I get it back, but the open wound can be healed. Things cannot be restored, the grief may never end in this life, but they can reach a resolution, a point where there is peace.
In the eyes of those who care about this it will never be enough. The South will always and forever be nothing but slavery and Jim Crow, and nothing we do will change that.
It’s not just you. I have the same thoughts when someone blathers on about “closure.”
Sadly, I think you’re right. On the upshot, it does mean that most non-southern Liberals won’t move here…too scary.
That use of healing came with the emergence of therapeutic culture. I’m 45, and to my memory it came on line about the time I was old enough to notice – in my late teens? The mid-to-late eighties?
It makes me think of grief counselors.
But the good people of Charleston are doing a great job at up-ending the liberals’ stereotypes. You’ve got to love this video from the local paper.
For those concerned about the timing this is precisely why this was the right time for action on the flag. Think of this as a local and state, not national issue. This wasn’t Ferguson or Baltimore with people rioting in the streets and making outrageous demands. Whatever national media and politicians were bleating about, South Carolina made its own decision and did so in a positive way.
Indeed. And the beautiful, integrated society shown in that video is exactly the South I’ve come to know and love since moving here (to North Carolina) almost a decade ago.
Hate to say it but we are in a quasi-civil war already with the folks Guru speaks of. Certainly you are not going to say that the families of the victims from the church shooting have not been co-opted by the Leftist scum descending on South Carolina? Who was it that brought the flag issue up to begin with? Seems to me that the victims have focused on the actual perp and not the flag. It was the non-Southern agitators who came down and looked for something to use as a cudgel to beat the South with.
The ANV had regiments from all around the CSA. John B. Hood–namesake for Fort Hood–was from Texas and his regiment was part of the ANV.
Conservatism has no future. That much is obvious from this thread. Too many are willing to feed the crocodile in hopes that they won’t get eaten. And some here love the crocodile.
Random thoughts from a guy who lives here (random, frankly, because I’m sick and tired of the ceaseless sturm and drang over this bit of laundry that comes and goes around here year in and year out):
That’s that. Now we’ll get back to the work of creating jobs that other states seem not to want to do.
Who is the crocodile in this scenario?