Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 243

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace," by Nikki Haley.

I consider Jesse Jackson a friend to this day because he took time to know me as a person. He didn’t come into South Carolina and take shots at me just because I was a Republican. He didn’t come into my state to stir up trouble. He came in to understand. And once he understood my intentions, he saw that I was just trying to do the best I could in a difficult situation. I came to understand the same about him. Most of all, I came to respect that in a situation in which he could have scored cheap political points, he chose to listen rather than scream. There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

But more important, the president and vice president valued in me the same thing I always valued in colleagues and advisors: I was direct. I had a point and I got to it quickly. It’s one of the most important leadership lessons I’ve learned: Don’t talk for the sake of talking. When you say something, make it matter. If you agree with something, offer ways to make it happen. If you disagree, say so. But always have a plan to find a solution.

Some wrote that I was the only departing cabinet member who had left on good terms, with my reputation enhanced by my time in the Trump administration. Usually, when the media wrote those kinds of things, it was more to criticize President Trump than to flatter me. The truth was, if I was leaving the Trump administration in better shape than when I came in, it was because of two things: my good relationship with the president, and my respect for his office. 

I think a lot of things accounted for my relationship with the president. But above all, we were able to work together because he trusted me. I understood my job was to carry out his agenda. And he understood that I would always tell him the truth, whether he wanted to hear it or not. 

The number-one difference between me and some of those who left the administration on less-than-good terms was that I never thought I was a stand-in for the president. They sometimes did. As a member of the president’s cabinet, I conducted myself the same way I wanted my cabinet to treat me when I was governor. I wanted them to be creative. I wanted them to remember that they served the people. And I wanted them to challenge me if they ever thought I was going in a direction they disagreed with. What I did not want them to do was to make the mistake of thinking they were the governor, or that they should be. If that’s what they sincerely believed, I expected them to resign their positions and take a run at the job themselves. 

This was not a question of love of country. Everyone I served with is a patriot. It wasn’t even a question of how they felt about the president; some were more on board with his agenda than others. It was a question of following and honoring the Constitution. 

At the end of the day, the person who serves as president is the choice of the people. Our job is to serve the people, and that means honoring the office of the presidency. When we think something is wrong, our job is to stand up and make our voices heard. It is not to plot and scheme behind the president’s back. We owe our loyalty to the American people and the Constitution. 

When my colleagues actively worked to defy the president—and then bragged about it in public, like “Anonymous” did—they broke their trust with the public. They decided they were the best judges of who should lead the country, not the people. And they encouraged our adversaries overseas to exploit the instability they created. 

There were people in the White House who didn’t trust me because I had been critical of the president in the 2016 primary. And there were other people who criticized me for going to work in the Trump administration in the first place. But I wasn’t interested in playing political “us versus them” games. I wanted to serve my country with honesty and integrity. In the end, I was blessed to do that.