What is Kristi Noem Doing to Herself? Why Doesn’t She See It?
Success is part doing what needs to be done and part not doing what will prevent progress and block desired achievement.
Sometimes people have the tendency to self-sabotage their work and lives because they don’t recognize that some of their decisions and actions are clearly going to navigate them away from getting where they badly want to go and hope and work to arrive.
South Dakota Republican governor, Kristi Noem, may be one of those people right now, as her errors are playing out vividly in the public eye.
Noem is as confident and ambitious as it gets and she was excited to be a name considered to be Donald Trump’s running mate for the White House.
So why is Noem blind to her communication and reactions to the criticism about it? Because public opinion and reality isn’t computing right now and what is transpiring is driving her future headfirst into what could be a grand lost professional opportunity. Figurative road sign: Rejection.
So far, she is too proud to listen, learn and instead, go the right direction.
Does it make sense for Noem and her political goals to write a book heartlessly, pompously detailing her angry, out-of-control, shooting behavior of a pet dog, young and untrained, because it was deemed dangerous, a story told in detail and then reported on by Margaret Hartmann, a senior editor for the New York Intelligencer.
Noem’s behavior reportedly scared witnesses for their own safety, despite her downplaying what happened as just a reality of farm life.
How she (the ultimate decision maker) and her communications team reasonably thought this book release, with that unnecessary and inflammatory story in it, would benefit her with the media, opposing party, her own party and public in a public relations manner is incomprehensible.
The bragging and attempt to make this some example of her toughness to show she takes care of problems quickly and decisively defies logic.
If likability isn’t a political objective, then don’t give people, especially the opposition and potential critics, a reason to cast aspersions on you.
My word!
“To a person, everyone agrees (that) she killed her chances (for being picked to run for the presidency with Trump), pun intended,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, reported Tal Axelrod at ABC News.
“The bigger issue politically speaking is why anyone thought putting this in a book was a good idea — editors, agent, etc.,” Spicer said in shock and dismay, referring to the anecdote about Noem’s dog. “It’s like a job applicant saying unprompted they stole office furniture during an interview.”
Noem’s office declined to comment for this story, Axelrod wrote.
Of course she did. It might be for the best if past communication judgment and defensiveness would have been her next reaction.
There are more problems though as Noem has had to address: claims about meetings with world leaders that don’t have the evidence to support them.
She has done extensive damage to her name, reputation and career aspiration of being vice president if Trump were to regain the presidency.
Publicly at least, it doesn’t appear that she understands how and why her name in the news has suddenly gone careening out of control and crashed.
That lack of understanding or finger pointing will not help because she is not so strong politically and with voters that she can overcome the negative perceptions about her self control and decision making and the ability to masterfully talk about errors, real or perceived, in the media and to the voters.
This will become a political history lecture that will be taught and a lesson for candidates and business people alike about what to include and not include in books that are published and widely distributed.
Michael Toebe is the founder and practicing specialist for consulting, advisory and communications at Reputation Intelligence — Reputation Quality.
He serves individuals and organizations with further building — and ethically and responsibly protecting, restoring and reconstructing reputation trust. He is the writer and publisher of Reputation Intelligence here on Medium and the newsletter on Substack.