Did Kristi Noem Just Doom Her Career? (2024)

The Atlantic Daily

She may have forgotten that Americans love dogs more than they love politicians.

By John Hendrickson

April 29, 2024

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

American voters have never been more polarized—except, perhaps, when it comes to the shared belief that shooting a puppy is wrong. Has Kristi Noem’s admission of such an act doomed her political future?

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

David Frum: “The plot to wreck the Democratic convention”
America lost the plot with TikTok.
Touch screens are ruining cars.
Will Americans ever get sick of cheap junk?

The Shot Read ’Round the World

Say this for Kristi Noem: She has an eye for literary detail.

The South Dakota governor is one week out from the publication of her new book, No Going Back (more on that title later). On Friday, The Guardian reported on one of the anecdotes Noem shares with her readers. In the book, the governor recalls the day she realized that her puppy, Cricket, had crossed the line from poorly behaved menace to, well, a problem that needed solving. Noem led Cricket to a gravel pit. Then she pulled the trigger. “It was not a pleasant job,” the governor writes. “But it had to be done.”

It’s the phrase gravel pit that stands out most—imagery fit for a Cormac McCarthy novel. Typically, campaign books don’t scream “literature.” They’re more or less marketing tools meant to showcase a politician’s character and leadership skills. Noem likely believed that recounting this saga (in addition to a story about killing a goat) would serve as a testament to her courage and her rural bona fides, endearing her to millions of potential voters. Instead, Noem publishing these sentences may one day be remembered as the gravest mistake of her career.

The backlash has been swift. Beyond Democrats and liberals seizing on the moment, even some Republicans and conservatives have offered condemnations. “Omg - now my blood is boiling,” the right-leaning social media influencer Catturd told his 2.4 million followers on X. “Remember, I’m a country boy who lives on a ranch. There’s a huge difference between putting an old horse down who is suffering, than shooting a 18 month dog for being untrainable.” In reality, Cricket appears to have been 14 months old. According to The Guardian, the puppy had attacked other animals, and Noem maintains she decided to put the dog down because it showed “aggressive behavior toward people by biting them.”

With some scandals, members of the American public have notoriously short memories, or at least they may be more inclined to forgive. But certain images never leave the collective psyche—especially when they involve dogs. This fundamental truth transcends politics. Michael Vick was one of the most dazzling NFL quarterbacks of the past quarter century, but you probably remember him first and foremost as the dog-fighting guy. The act of shooting a dog, as Noem did, is, for some, impossible to stomach. (Though once a dog has attacked a human, that calculus changes for others.) Canine execution was once the dark joke of the January 1973 death-themed issue of National Lampoon, the cover of which featured a man holding a revolver against a floppy ear along with the warning “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” (The pup in question, Mr. Cheeseface, looks bewildered.)

What is it about dogs, in particular, that tugs at our core? In a recent essay for The Atlantic, Tommy Tomlinson, the author of the new book Dogland, offered his own unique admission: “By any measure, I loved my mom more than our dog. If I could bring one back, I’d pick her 100 times out of 100. So why, in the moment of their passing, did I cry for him but not for her?” Many dogs, even the bad ones, are seen as unimpeachable. Elected officials, not so much.

Noem is (was?) considered to be among former president Donald Trump’s top prospects for a 2024 running mate. Now she’ll have to fight to escape being branded the woman who once killed her own puppy. Many people seem to want her to express some form of contrition. On Friday, Noem posted a screenshot of the Guardian article, writing, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.” Then she plugged her book. “If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder ‘No Going Back.’”

Yesterday, with the online fervor still raging, Noem released a second statement, standing by the idea that shooting the puppy, rather than, say, putting it up for adoption, was the “right” thing to do. “I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book—No Going Back,” her statement read. “The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned … Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor. As I explained in the book, it wasn’t easy. But often the easy way isn’t the right way.”

No Going Back’s subtitle—The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward—is the exact sort of phrase you expect to read in a studied politician’s carefully curated treatise. Many of these books are often quite rote, devices meant to serve as the starting point of a national campaign. A lot of them, but not all of them, are bland by design. Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father is perhaps the most notable exception to the rule, but there are others. Jason Kander, once seen as an heir to Obama’s Democratic Party, published a memoir in 2018 about his time serving in Afghanistan and working in state politics that largely fit the political-book mold, right down to the title: Outside the Wire: Ten Lessons I’ve Learned in Everyday Courage. But four years later, he returned with a second memoir, Invisible Storm, showcasing edges of his life that he had sanded down in his first outing. The result was an honest and radically candid look at the depths of his PTSD.

Typically, but not always, political books are produced with the help of a ghostwriter. Noem’s publisher did not respond to my request for comment as to whether Noem used one.

This morning, I called the journalist Maximillian Potter, who collaborated with Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado on his political memoir, The Opposite of Woe, and served as an editorial consultant on the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s memoir, The Power of One. (Potter is also the co-author of an Atlantic investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the Hollywood mogul Bryan Singer.) He was careful to note that the Guardian report may not include the chapter’s full context; still, Noem has not refuted any of the details. What stood out most to Potter was how Noem, according to the report, writes that she “hated that dog.” “I’ve never heard anyone refer to a pet or an animal with hate. As a collaborator, that’s the word I would have discussed,” Potter told me. “I think part of a ghost or a collaborator’s job on projects like this is to not discourage the author from sharing their truth; it’s to be a thought partner and help them think through what it is they’re really trying to say.”

Potter also brought up an old political idiom, often attributed to Robert F. Kennedy (senior), later popularized by Chris Matthews: “Hang a lantern on your problem.” Maybe that’s what is really going on here. In the book, Noem reportedly notes that a construction crew watched her kill both the puppy and the goat. Perhaps, as her national profile grows, and as potential vetting for Trump’s VP gets under way, Noem sought to get in front of any potentially damaging story that might emerge through opposition research. (Her chief of communications did not respond to my request for an interview.)

Noem is midway through her second term as governor, and she’s ineligible for a third. No Going Back was supposed to be a prelude to her next chapter. Trump even blurbed it: “This book, it’s a winner.” But if he doesn’t pick Noem for VP, her new book’s title may have prophesied the end of her political story.

Related: