Reports indicate that Nikki Haley has resigned as United States ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump has accepted her resignation. In this file photo Haley is seen attending a UN Security Council meeting in New York on April 10. Photo: VCG

How seriously should we take Nikki Haley's presidential candidacy? Perhaps even Haley herself won't take it too seriously. 

Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, announced her candidacy for president on Tuesday. Analysts are talking about her posing the first major challenge to former president Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. Yet according to recent polls, as long as Trump is still in the race, other Republicans should expect little. 

A slight hope exists though, as Trump is under a criminal investigation for his handling of sensitive government documents after leaving office. It means he may lose the opportunity to run for president again. Also, Americans for Prosperity Action, the deep-pocketed network associated with billionaire Charles Koch, is preparing to throw hundreds of millions of US dollars and weight behind a single Republican candidate, other than Trump, in the 2024 presidential primary. Haley may thus be motivated to make an early move.  

But it is known to all that the culture of white supremacy, or white male supremacy, has gone fully mainstream in the Republican Party. There is little hope for women or minorities to stand out. Sponsors for the candidates will also make a calculation before pouring money for anyone. It is highly likely that quite a few Americans have no idea who Haley is, and one of her previous positions, US ambassador to the UN, is neither on the radar of American people's attention. 

Speaking at her first rally in Charleston, South Carolina, Haley displayed the characteristics of her political and foreign policy views: unusually tough. She vowed that under her leadership, "Communist China will end up on the ash heap of history… like the Soviet Union before it." Like many other US politicians, Haley is casting her eyes on the other side of the globe, while turning blind to US domestic decay. The US needs a fix other than anything else, otherwise, it will move toward the ash heap.

Take the chemical leak in Ohio, triggered by a train derailment, as an example. On the internet, it is described by netizens both at home and abroad as a "Chernobyl-level" catastrophe of the US. Yet both the US government and media outlets have been hesitant to report and dig into the accident. It is even more ironic when they made a big fuss about a harmless weather balloon. 

The tragedy in Ohio is largely a problem of deteriorating infrastructure in the US. From Barack Obama, Donald Trump to Joe Biden, every president has made ambitious promises to boost US infrastructure. What have they delivered then? Biden did pass some relevant bills, with only a sprinkle of money, far from the amount of budget for defense and intelligence. What had US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg been busy doing when Ohio catastrophe occurred? Talking about China!

The crime rate is rising in the US, so are mass shootings. But American elites, politicians and scholars don't seem to care. They do not want to open their eyes and have a good look at their home country. They cannot hear the cries nearby. All they focus on is the region far away from the US, waiting for China to end up on the ash heap of history. 

Haley's speech illustrates a trend that any combative politician who talks big feels qualified to run for US president. She also signals that in the coming presidential campaigns, the Republican Party will spare no effort in making anti-China its biggest theme. 

Is a competent president, or diplomat, supposed to have such a tough style? American politics is going through an era of shifting from the Biden generation to younger ones. Those born in the 1960s or 1970s grew up during the Cold War, and all their education was filled with a Cold War mentality. Their theories are not suitable for today, and some of them are not even worth refuting. It's a pity that their mind-set has solidified. Haley's speech is proof of this.

If Haley and her like do not wake up, it is the US, led by politicians with outdated theories, that risks walking open-eyed toward the ash heap of history.

The author is research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn