I wouldn't vote for Kristi Noem for dogcatcher
South Dakota’s Governor, once rumored to be among the favorites to be Donald Trump’s running mate, shoots herself in the political foot after revealing she shot Cricket, her misbehaving dog.
In 1956 an aspiring Vice-Presidential Candidate, John F. Kennedy, the then junior Senator from Massachusetts, wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage, that he hoped would enhance his national reputation and further his political ambitions. In 2024 another aspiring Vice-Presidential hopeful, South Dakota’s Governor, Kristi Noem, just released a book titled No Going Back, that she hopes will do for her what Profiles did for Kennedy.
While Kennedy profiled eight party-bucking US Senators who demonstrated political courage by putting the interests of the nation above their own personal ambition, Noem spins a repulsive tale involving, not party-bucking, but buckshot, a misbehaving dog named Cricket, and an ornery goat—to demonstrate hers.
Noem, who desperately wants to be seen as a contender to be former President Trump’s running mate, tells the sad story of a female wire-haired pointer named Cricket that she had hoped to use to hunt pheasant on her ranch. Cricket, she said, proved “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless” as a hunting dog—so she shot Cricket and left her in gravel pit. While she was at it she then shot and killed an unnamed rebellious goat for good measure.
“I hated that dog,” she wrote.
Shouldn’t a parable have a lesson?
“Noem seems to have recounted the episode as something of a parable,” writes Ashley Parker in the Washington Post, “intended to show both that she is tough enough to face ‘difficult, messy and ugly’ tasks and authentic enough to tell the truth about it.” Parables are supposed to teach a lesson—and as it turns out the lesson to be learned here, though not apparently by Noem—is to not to be stupid enough to proudly crow to the world you shot your dog.
“It’s hard to imagine a universe where bragging about shooting your 14-month-old puppy increases your brand value,” US Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) wrote in a text to The Post. You might fairly ask yourself, “What was she thinking?” The truly scary answer? Just what she told us.
For those of us old enough to remember, most Americans forgave Jimmy Carter for admitting he “lusted in his heart” back in the late 70’s. He went on to become President. But American’s today are finding it hard to forgive Noem for her confession. On second thought, confession is the wrong word—because a confession implies remorse and contrition. Noem was proud of what she did, and she wants you to be too.
Despite Noem’s claims to the contrary, the backlash hasn’t come just from left-leaning media. “Hosts at Fox News and Newsmax,” reports The Post, “have increasingly criticized and distanced themselves from South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) following the release of her latest book.”
Noem explains that Cricket “ruined” a hunt and killed some of her neighbor’s chickens. She has claimed in numerous appearances on TV talk shows that she killed Cricket to protect her family—though nowhere in the book does she mention that Cricket had ever acted aggressively towards her family—or any human.
In a bizarre interview she gave to Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” this past Sunday, Noem doubled down. First, by unapologetically defending her execution of Cricket, and then by implying—which she also suggested in her book—that she would have put down President Biden’s dog Commander as well. You might remember reports of Commander biting numerous Secret Service agents. The Bidens finally (after much deserved criticism) removed Commander from the White House, though thankfully not the same way Cricket was removed from the Noem house.
Ignoring warnings from her publisher and editors to leave out the Cricket anecdote, somehow Noem believed it would resonate with voters and establish her “toughness” bona fides. Instead, most Americans think she’s a psychopath. She insists she’s being unfairly judged. But it’s not wrong to question the judgment of someone who so massively misreads the public she hopes to represent, or is so out-of-touch with social norms. In fact, it’s our duty. That might be the book’s most telling take-away.
“I’m not sure anybody supports you on shooting the dog,” Fox News Business host Stuart Varney told Noem during an interview on Wednesday, adding: “We’ve been consumed with emails saying, ‘I won’t vote for this person. I won’t vote for Trump if he puts her in the vice-presidential spot.’”
Is “not bending” what’s breaking?
As disturbing as Noem’s Cricket anecdote is, it’s also a revealing insight into the state of politics today, and how politicians increasingly confuse “toughness” with “courage.” It’s de rigueur among today’s politicos to want to appear “tough”—and that they will neither break, nor bend.
“One of the reasons that the profession of politics suffers from such low public esteem is that it is constantly being run down by politicians themselves,” New York Times Book reviewer Cabell Phillips wrote in his review of Profiles In Courage back in 1956. Sadly, little has changed.
Those who compromise—or heavens, work with the other party—are castigated for being weak, or traitors, or both. Just ask former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who was unceremoniously deposed after eight far-right Republicans moved to dump him after he agreed to pass an interim spending bill with Democratic votes, rather than shutting the government down.
It turns out, however, that most Americans would welcome more bipartisanship. “Overwhelming majorities in both parties think there is too much partisan fighting,” a Pew Research Center poll found this past September. According to Pew, 86% of those polled agreed that “Republicans and Democrats are more focused on fighting each other than on solving problems.”
“Conspicuous courage is difficult to come by under most circumstances but it is weighted with extra penalties in the political world,” Phillips said in his review of Profiles, “Each character took a stand—some fearlessly, others in frank trepidation—on some critical issue of his day that was unpopular with his constituents or his party but which his conscience would not let him evade.”
In Profiles Kennedy cited as examples of political courage Missouri’s Thomas Hart Benton’s and Texas’ Sam Houston’s—both slave state Senators—principled opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories during the prelude to the Civil War. Both lost their elections for following their conscience, instead of the popular will. THAT took political courage. But shooting your naughty dog?
Noem, writes New York Times columnist Michelle Cottle, ”has a potentially worrisome need to see, and present, herself as a nail-tough woman in a rock-hard world.” And it is in this misplaced need to present herself as “tough” where she falsely conflates toughness with courage.
Her book does, though inadvertently, raise an important question. What do we want from our political leaders? Do we want them to be “tough,” which I take Noem to mean “uncompromising,” or do we want them to have “courage,” which Kennedy meant to mean willing to stand up to what’s popular in favor of what’s right?
Gangsters are tough. Vladimir Putin is tough. I don’t want our leaders to be tough, I want them to have courage. And I want them to understand the difference. Sometimes that means sticking to your guns—though hopefully not like Noem—and sometimes that means having the guts to find a middle ground. I don’t want leaders to do the “tough” things—I want them to have the courage to do the “right” things.
Cricket’s Revenge?
In the aftermath of the uproar over her book—not only the revelation of her shooting her dog, but that she has misrepresented meetings with world leaders when she was in Congress—Noem has cancelled her scheduled book tour, citing the “weather.” Certainly, it has been stormy.
Noem could have found a better place for Cricket, and speaking of better places, it’s pretty obvious that Noem won’t have a place on the Trump ticket. “Witness Gov. Kristi Noem’s stunning self-destruction,” wrote Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, “Bragging about shooting her puppy in a gravel pit ended her hopes of being selected.”
Time will tell if Noem’s political career is over. I know I wouldn’t vote for her for dogcatcher—forget about Vice-President. Earlier I mentioned that her publishers had counseled that she remove the Cricket anecdote from her memoir. I’m glad she didn’t. In hindsight Kristi might wish otherwise—that she had heeded their advice—but like the title of her book, there’s No Going Back now.
Could this be Cricket’s revenge? Let’s hope so.