“If she runs in 2024, she’ll have to figure out how to keep her profile active for the next six years, and most politicians can’t manage that,” Tyler said.

The timing of Haley’s exit, less than a month before the 2018 midterms, struck many in the president’s circle as either savvy or suspect.

On the one hand, she leaves with foreign policy credentials, the credibility that comes from navigating an often chaotic White House and ahead of potential political fallout from the November elections or special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.

“She’s shrewd, which is good in politics, but you have to keep an eye open,” said H. Boyd Brown, a former Democratic South Carolina legislator who has battled with Haley in the past. “She’s coming for you if you are in her way.”