In a coincidence of great good fortune, I saw the “Barbie” movie right before watching the Republican presidential debate last week, and I must say, the parallels are impossible to resist.

“Barbie” has already become a cultural measuring stick for everything from beach fashion to appealing shades of pink to gender norms and stereotypes. It also features the best political speech of the year, far better than anything I’ve heard from politicians.

“Barbie” is also the perfect measuring stick for evaluating Nikki Haley’s standout performance as the only adult on the stage last Wednesday. And the only woman. You might just sum up the whole performance as: “Nikki and the Kens.”

The premise of the movie is that in Barbie World, everything is run by women, mostly named “Barbie,” with some supporting characters such as Skipper and Midge. The “Kens” in Barbie World preen about and flex their muscles and compete with each other for attention from the gals. (See where I’m going here?)

In the movie, a rift opens up in the barrier between Barbie World and the Real World and Barbie+Ken find themselves traveling to the Real World to fix that rift. It is in this world, our world, that Ken delightedly discovers that the guys set the rules rather than the Barbies.

In no time, Ken has returned to Barbie World and taken over, inspiring all the Kens to create their own make-believe world of male superiority that features “Mojo Dojo Casa Houses,” aggressive guitar playing and lots of horse videos. Barbie and all her fellow Barbies must set out to bring things back to normal.

Similarly, on the debate stage Wednesday, time and again, Haley seemed to look at the Kens surrounding her and implicitly say: Stop screaming and preening and deal with reality you overgrown children. She was the only one on stage trying to get the other candidates to see pragmatic, complex angles on the issues introduced. The “Kens” in the debate often responded with bombastic rhetoric and bumper-sticker performance politics.

“In a crowd full of screaming men and, at times, unhinged men, it helps to be the one person standing out because you choose to be poised and operate with a sense of decorum,” Ed Lee, director of Emory University’s Alben W. Barkley Forum for Debate, Deliberation and Dialogue, told the Washington Examiner.

“She showed total impatience for the kind of bravado that the fragile male ego manufactures by the boatload,” columnist David Brooks observed.

Ergo: She dispatched upstart Vivek Ramaswamy with the put down: “Under your watch, you will make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.” She dissected his simplistic America First philosophy by reminding him that we live in the real world. “He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, he wants to let China eat Taiwan, he wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to friends.”

Many of the Kens on stage took the abortion issue “as a chance to perform self-righteous bluster — to make the issue about themselves,” as Brooks put it so well.

Haley said bravely that “We need to stop demonizing this issue. Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes,” Haley said to Mike Pence. The president, she pointed out, doesn’t set some sort of national abortion policy. That is not the president’s job.

Haley highlighted her gender early in the debate to cut through a screaming match over energy policy and climate change. “This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman,” Haley announced to loud cheers.

On Trump himself, Haley didn’t dodge as most of the Kens did. She showed that she believes Republican voters are intelligent enough to be treated as adults when it comes to Trump, and candidates don’t have to pretend to still kinda sorta support him if they don’t. “We have to look at the fact that three quarters of Americans don’t want a rematch between Trump and Biden. And we have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”

All the Ken-esque posturing and bombast seen Wednesday were inspired directly by the uber-Ken, Trump himself, and the alternate reality he created, Trump World. 

“Wednesday’s debate illustrated the cancer that is eating away at the Republican Party,” columnist Brooks, a self-identified moderate Republican, wrote. “It’s not just Trumpian immorality. The real disease is narcissistic hucksterism. The real danger is that he’s creating generations of people, like Vivek Ramaswamy, who threaten to dominate the GOP for decades to come.

“When politics becomes entertainment, it’s very easy to create a land of make-believe in which you get high on your own supply. To follow Trump, you more or less have to say farewell to the actual world and live by the rules of the fun house carnival. Haley seems to have her feet still planted on the ground — able to face what Saul Bellow once called ‘the reality situation.’”

Republicans have been living far too long in Trump World, was the message I heard from Haley. And she’s ready to lead them back to reality.

That won’t be easy, of course.

Any Republican candidate who is going to displace Trump is going to have to start rising above the other candidates soon and post some big poll numbers. Haley did see the sharpest rise in support after the debate, according to a new poll from The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, and Ipsos.

But there will be special challenges ahead for a woman presidential candidate, as usual.

The actress America Ferrera (what a name!) gives a speech in the “Barbie” movie that speaks eloquently to the expectations of how women must act in the Real World to be acceptable not just to men but to other women.

Her comments apply aptly to Haley’s run.

“It is literally impossible to be a woman,” Ferrera says. “Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

“You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.“

Multiply all that times ten for a woman running for president.

But here’s the thing: the “Barbie” movie is also the runaway hit of the year, earning over $1 billion already, and clearly speaking to something in the zeitgeist.

The cultural moment it has tapped into may indicate a new day is dawning for gender relations in this country. And that new day may just give Haley all the momentum she needs.