Nikki Haley gives good face.

     Vogue has a puff piece up about Governor Haley that reminds me of Winston Churchill's comment about Labour Party leader Clement Atlee, whom he called "a modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about."
     Warthen's certainly not impressed:

          She believes that everything she believes is true, and doesn’t doubt. And as I remember from years past when I would grumpily try to disabuse her of one of those bumper-sticker principles — say, “I want to see government run like a business” — she is impervious to reason, perspective or argument.

          If I were like that, my face would be pretty free of lines, too.

        As the NYT Magazine noted, “Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, doesn’t care what you think.”

Sometimes, the national media get it just right, in spite of themselves.

    Among the lowlights of the article:

- She  is a woman of deeply held political convictions.

          When she first pondered a run for the state legislature, she says, “I didn’t even know if I was Republican or Democrat.” The young Republicans she knew in college were “way too stiff.” But her friends quickly set her straight: “Once I started talking about my views, they were like, ‘God, you’re a Republican!’ ” It was, however, a speech by Hillary Clinton at a 2003 conference at a local university that inspired her to run. “She said there will be all of these reasons that people tell you you can’t do it. She said that there’s only one reason for you to do it, and it’s because you know it’s the right thing. I walked out of there thinking, I’ve got to do this,” she says. Haley has gotten heat from Republicans for crediting Clinton in the past, and she is quick to assure me that when it comes to policy, the more relevant role model is Margaret Thatcher.

- Noblesse oblige is not dead.

          (Michael Haley tells me that one consequence of promising to shrink government is that the family can’t hire additional staff for the residence. Looks like Rena and Nalin may be stuck making their own beds for a while.)

- What you see is what you get.

          Aptly enough for the country’s youngest governor, Haley uses Facebook to present a carefully curated look into her home life: the dog escaping the grounds; Nalin adopting two frogs; Rena giving her fish a funeral.

- She's yet another "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" Republican.

          Not all Republicans look like Republicans, and someone like Haley may represent the last chance the party has to reach the very voters—women, young people, and minorities—that Romney and Rick Santorum are currently driving away.