Kristi Noem’s Team Told Her to Nix the Dog Story 2 Years Ago

What it didn’t do, of course, was spark a weeklong news cycle — and a round of obituaries for that same political future — by including a tale about Noem leading a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named Cricket to a gravel pit and shooting her to death after she ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens. Thanks to the economics of book publishing — where a single smash hit balances out a string of mediocre sellers — publishers also know that there’s always a chance that the vicissitudes of politics could lead to gold even with mediocre sellers: Consider the memoir by the unknown Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama, which became a bestseller years later when the future president’s star rose. Noem’s new book — which doesn’t officially publish until May 7 — meets that standard: Whatever you think of putting down a dog for attacking a neighbor’s chickens, the decision to keep the story in the book And beyond the Cricket story, possibly making up an easily disprovable memory about meeting Kim Jong Un — or else confusing one of the world’s most recognizable tyrants with some random other person — is a quality-control problem altogether different from the usual one in which pols fill books with lame cliches. Javelin’s principals told me they thought the embarrassing round of publicity around Noem’s new book might be a reminder that quality actually matters, whether the goal is selling books or selling a candidacy. And that’s why content, fact-checking, research, saying something new and interesting, or having an argument matters.” Sounds good to me, but there’s also an irony about the story that has Noem in so much hot water: If I were editing a memoir by some public figure in or out of politics, and it included a story about intentionally killing their dog, I would absolutely include it — it’s a fascinatingly unusual tale, so different from the typical self-aggrandizing autobiographer, one that raises huge questions and reveals something about character.