Nikki Haley broke another barrier late last week. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations became the first woman to address the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at its annual membership dinner in New York City. The first female speaker in the 235-year history of an organization that only recently invited women to join.

Haley is making a career of firsts – notably, first female governor of South Carolina – but her most significant first may have come in the Trump years. That trail-blazing achievement may herald a “yuuge” first still to come. As South Carolina governor and ambassador to the U.N., Haley successfully negotiated her way through the tweet-tossed waters of Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency. She has emerged with a solid record of accomplishment at the U.N. and her dignity intact.

That’s no mean feat in either venue. The United Nations, where talk is often a substitute for action, or the Trump administration, where not having the door (or a dismissive presidential tweet) hit you in the rear on the way out is rare. In short, Ambassador Haley is one Republican who seems to have mastered the wild politics of the Trump age.

She not only left on her own terms, but served on them, too. Whether representing U.S. interests at the U.N. or responding to the latest Trump controversy, Haley combined savvy and subtlety with principled toughness and measured scrappiness. She made her case, marshaled her arguments, with facts and fierce precision, dignity, and even elegance.

Consider her achievements in two years at the U.N. Haley secured tough new sanctions against North Korea and Russia –as well as an arms embargo against South Sudan, where a civil war rages and women and children are caught in the crossfire. She made inroads in reforming the U.N. bureaucracy and cutting its budget. Her record even impressed U.N. watchers who are critical of the Trump administration’s foreign policies.

Haley deserves credit for less tangible successes in New York, too. She wasn’t able to stop the U.N. from condemning President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize that city as Israel’s capital. But she stood up for the administration and its ally in a hard-hitting speech that promised we would be “taking names” of those on the other side of the vote. She did the same when the General Assembly failed to pass a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas for “repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence, thereby putting civilians at risk” and digging tunnels into Israel.

Haley’s constructive candor was also on display when the United States bowed out of the U.N.’s reality-challenged Humans Right Council, its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and Global Compact for Migration. If anyone thinks these moves reflected hostility to human rights on her part, they haven’t looked very closely. Haley has been outspoken in arguing that the U.N. Security Council should focus on human rights and not just peace and security because human right abuses are inevitably related to peace and security. She’s been an eloquent defender of religious liberty across the globe.

“You’re Irish, and you’re proud. You should be. You have your roots in helping the Irish in America,” Haley told the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick last Friday evening. “You’ve maintained your identity while serving the broader community.” She continued: “The past couple years have taken me to places where religious, ethnic, and political differences define who gets fed and who doesn’t. Who gets raped and who doesn’t. Who lives and who dies. I wish everyone squabbling on Twitter could see what I have seen ... because I have seen true evil. It puts things in perspective.”

In word and deed, Haley may be our most consequential U.N. ambassador since Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, two towering figures of Irish descent. For all her criticisms of the U.N., she made being U.S. ambassador to that lumbering, under-performing organization relevant again.

She did so while serving a president who was (a) no fan of the United Nations; and (b) a challenge, shall we say, in terms of policy contradictions and personal conduct. Through it all, Haley handled herself with almost Solomon-like wisdom and poise. Time and again, she struck a tone of perfect pitch, protecting her own credibility and alternately protecting or confronting the president she served.

Having mastered the politics of the Trump era at the young age of 47, Nikki Haley may be to be the ideal Republican for the post-Trump age and someday lay claim to another first.