Consider the irony: Even as liberal women denounce the Trump presidency as a bastion of male swagger and anti-woman policies, could it prove a platform for Nikki R. Haley to emerge as a viable Republican presidential candidate?

Ms. Haley, President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has been ubiquitous this month, denouncing Syria’s chemical weapons attack at the United Nations and on the Sunday talk shows last weekend. She gained a seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee as part of the shake-up that ousted Stephen K. Bannon.

Before the Syria attack, she was taking a tougher public line on Russia than her boss, denouncing Iran and deriding the United Nations’ hostility to Israel — all catnip to mainstream Republicans. In an administration whose visuals run toward roomfuls of white men, this daughter of Indian immigrants is capitalizing on her very public stage.

Yet the obstacles are as real as the opportunities. A woman who denounced Mr. Trump during the campaign may well be yoked to the fate of a so far rocky presidency, branded with any foreign policy missteps. Her future political viability may depend on a tricky balancing act: how well she can position herself as distinct from Mr. Trump without seeming insubordinate. Her stance on the aggressive projection of American force overseas and her early condemnation of Russia hew more to the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party than the Bannon “America First” wing, though in an administration that seems to make up its foreign policy on the fly, it’s hard to decide who’s prevailing when.