Unlike most other top politicians, Nikki Haley looks young and terrific, even dressed in hot pink. Not since JFK or Barack Obama has a presidential candidate looked as smart as she does on the cover of her new campaign book, With All Due Respect.
The competition in politicians’ dress is not necessarily so stiff. George Washington was said to have turned heads when in uniform. Alexander Hamilton, though never a candidate, was also said to look sharp. The worst, by a long way, was Hillary Clinton, who, despite the ardent support and presumed advice of Anna Wintour and the whole fashion industry, often looked as if she were dressed in a curtain.
That might be why she lost to a man who is himself no oil painting. President Trump’s resemblance to an unmade bed was at moments quite marked during the 2016 race.
The best dressed woman in political life right now is Nancy Pelosi, and also the toughest in all of her party. Her Max Mara coat early last winter gave rise to a flood of admiring comments and caused a run on the model in stores.
As speaker of the House at a critical moment, she is our first female pol to use real power well and look good while doing it. But Haley could close on her soon.
If you doubt it means something to all-but-announce for high office in pink, consider that pink is the ultimate girlish and feminine color. As an office, the American presidency, that is, the role of commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces and de facto head of the NATO alliance, (think Dwight D. Eisenhower), is about just as manly as you can get.
“Pretty in Pink” was the name that the press put on the press conference staged by Hillary Clinton in April of 1994, the one where she tried to persuade the American people there had been nothing untoward about the $100,000 profit she had made on an initial $1,000 investment in cattle futures back in Little Rock in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, when women surged into the professions and politics together in force, the power suit came with them, defined by a user on Wikipedia as “a fashion style that enables women to establish their authority in a professional and political environment traditionally dominated by men” and by NPR as “designed to ignore a woman’s shape so it didn’t hinder her mobility” as she plotted her way to the top.
Shoulders were in, the bigger the better, as were loose jackets, primary colors, and way too much red. Pants were a thing, for nobody more than for Clinton, who ditched skirts completely around the time of her husband’s impeachment. Perhaps it was her way of saying she was now the man of the family. We last saw her legs in the mid-1990s, and we may never see them again.
This helps explain why Haley, who stood up after the Charleston church massacre and announced the subsequent removal of the Confederate flag, read the riot act on a regular basis to a United Nations that deserved it. She got what she wanted from Trump without giving in to him. She is the one female politician who doesn’t need power dressing to prove that she’s tough.
This is the kind of cojones that doesn’t go out of style, and it shines through for her even when dressed up pink.
