I know it ‘s premature, since I predicted (and I stand by it) that Donald Trump would win reelection handily in 2020, but more and more I am convinced that Nikki Haley should be our first woman president.

And this is not just a reaction to the recent publication of Hillary Clinton’s new book What Happened in which Mrs. Clinton apparently details precisely the opposite, blaming everyone and everything for her defeat from Bernie Sanders to the “late eclipses of the sun and moon,” except for herself. I say “apparently” because I am less likely actually to read her book — or even to purchase it as a doorstop — than the 1938 Farmer’s Almanac translated into Serbian. (You never know where the royalties are going and Putin already has enough uranium.)

No, this is all about Mrs. Haley who, as our UN ambassador, has looked and acted more like a future president than anyone I can think of in current politics. Anyone who can wrangle those clowns in the Security Council can do just about anything. She has also given “what for” to one of the more hypocritical organizations on the planet — the UN Human Rights Council,

Just the other day, she maneuvered Russia and China into the most serious sanctions yet against North Korea with a unanimous vote of the Security Council. As President Trump said today, that may not mean much in the end and more serious options are probably necessary, but still it’s an accomplishment. Nothing ventured, as they say…

Indeed, Haley has worked remarkably well with Trump, though they were at loggerheads during the election. It speaks well of both of them that they could put that so easily aside. In the UN, Trump, the wild man threatening Kim Jung-un with “fury,” makes a great foil for Haley, just as Nixon was a foil for Kissinger during the original China negotiations with Mao and Chou. Who knows what will transpire now, but it’s obvious the old way of handling the China-North Korea duopoly did not work. To repeat what has failed again and again would be, as the old saying goes, the definition of insanity.

In further praise of Haley, she seems like an old-fashioned (genuine equality) feminist as opposed to the modern faux feminist of the rancid Linda Sarsour/Madonna sort, looking for sexism in every possible venue while complaining of inequality everywhere when more and more women have come to outnumber men on almost every college campus. Haley does things and shuts up about it, winning the respect of both sexes. She also handles controversy well.

Whether you always agree with her on everything or even on just a few things, or on none at all, these traits are valuable in a president. In the end we usually vote on character for the presidency, more than on the issues — the economy being the obvious exception. I know certain people’s head will explode when they read this, but it is largely on character that I chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. He seemed more genuine — far more, in fact, since Clinton was, and apparently still is, particularly hollow and dishonest.

I never thought Trump was anything close to a racist and still don’t, despite what our friends at ESPN and their juvenile supporters seem to believe (or claim to believe). Nor, I am certain, does Nikki Haley consider Donald Trump a racist. And she is the woman, you will recall, who removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds before such acts were fashionable, doing it in a sensible and forthright manner, rather than making the event politically inflammatory as many have done lately.

Haley punches all the presidential buttons you would think the Democrats would be desperate to have — a former governor, a woman, of Punjabi, Indian descent. Yes, I know Republicans would be playing their pathetic multiculti game by nominating her and, yes, there is nothing more execrable than identity politics. But in the spirit of “if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em,” the best way to lick the evil (and it is an evil) of identity politics is to use their own methods against them.

Nikki for President in 2024!

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. Follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.