Nikki Haley certainly impressed us with her latest move as the U.S.'s United Nations ambassador, securing heightened sanctions against the menacing North Korean communist regime.  As with everything she does over there, she's successful.  And that raises questions not as to whether she will become the next secretary of state, as the Washington Swamp is obsessing about, but whether she will become the next president after President Trump.

Here is Haley's latest, from CNN:

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new set of draconian US-drafted sanctions on North Korea that will further strangle its energy supplies and tighten restrictions on smuggling and the use of North Korean workers overseas.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, claimed that the new sanctions, levied in response to Pyongyang's November 29 ballistic missile test, went even further than sanctions passed in September that, at the time, were called the toughest yet.

"Today, we cut deeper," Haley said. She said the UN had repeatedly offered Pyongyang a choice and repeatedly, in its continued missile tests, the regime had "chosen the path of isolation."

The move follows two other times when she secured U.N. sanctions on North Korea this year.  Seems that whenever the hammerlock goes down onto the aggressive North Korean dictatorship elites, Haley is the one who makes it happen.  Wikipedia cites several such instances here.

When was the last time you heard of the U.N. being this successful on a critical matter such as North Korea?

It's happened on Haley's watch to such an extent that it's gotten noticeable.  President Trump, who says she's doing "a fantastic job," certainly has noticed.  NeverTrump skeptic Ralph Peters has noticed, too, apparently admiringly.  It's not just been North Korea, after all, where she has gotten the U.N. to get its act together – she is also credited with deterring a new chemical attack on Syria.  Incredibly, she's even gotten the respect of the establishment left.

From the left-wing Quartz:

Eight months into the job, however, and the skepticism has largely turned into praise for someone who, albeit starting from an exceptionally low bar, has proven herself a canny political operator while most of Trump’s cabinet flails. A case in point: when Haley marshals Trump through the UN General Assembly next week, she’ll do so having just helped deliver two broadly-lauded Security Council resolutions to sanction North Korea.

Indeed, watching Haley’s press conference at the White House on Sept. 15, previewing the General Assembly alongside national security advisor H.R. McMaster, it was hard not to feel she was making her unofficial debut as secretary of State. Haley was fluent and confident as reporters lobbed questions at her on North Korea, humanitarian crises, and other topics. And most strikingly her boss, Tillerson, was nowhere in sight.

In fact, as she wins plaudits among onlookers ranging from Melinda Gates (who told Quartz that Haley “is doing a particularly good job ... in difficult political times”) to Eurasia Group director Ian Bremmer (she’s an “exceptionally talented politician” who has “done a pretty good job so far”), the figure least publicly impressed with Haley seems to be her ultimate boss, the president.

Even on supposed non-successes, she seems to succeed.  The drubbing the U.S. got in the U.N. this week, with Haley involved, made the U.S. come out smelling like roses.

Haley's success at the U.N. seems to stem from two strengths: she knows how to frame an issue, as she did here:

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem," she said. "That is what the American people want us to do and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN, and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN, and this vote will be remembered."

And she knows how to use muscle.  In some analyses, the reason Russia and China went along with the U.S. without a veto on sanctions is that they knew that the U.S. would use force, without their input, if the measure did not pass.  That's muscle.  I've actually criticized her for using too much muscle in the past, but in retrospect, it seems to have worked.

Compare and contrast with the last U.N. ambassador, the sanctimonious Samantha Power, who couldn't even keep track of her password in the unmaskings scandal and whose "duty to protect" legacy brought us the Benghazi massacre and the revival of the African slave trade.

Then think to Haley's couldn't-be-more-unlike-it record that followed.

With a record like that, matched with her excellent record as governor of South Carolina, we have domestic chops followed by fantastic international chops.  And in a nice little disarming ding at leftist identity politics, she's a woman, and a minority woman at that.

Could anyone really be better positioned to succeed President Trump?