Former Aberdeen mayor Levsen: Kristi Noem’s failure at DHS and her well-deserved firing were no surprise

Kristi Noem’s dismissal as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was not a surprise.

I and lots of other South Dakotans were surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. One good hurricane would have done it, I think. Her time in the job was a historically massive failure.

Why did things go so wrong?

The most obvious cause is an utter lack of qualifications and capabilities. There was nothing in her public life to make anyone think she could handle this huge bureaucracy. Her time in the South Dakota Legislature and in the United States Congress was notable for a lack of any significant accomplishment. Just filled a seat.

The Noem governorship covered six years — then she did a “Sarah Palin” and quit. Her legacy was minimal involvement with the Legislature, frequent absences, no transparency, repeated operational screwups, soaring turnover and instances of self-dealing for herself and her family.

Noem’s Covid-era “freedom” campaign was a Trump-based ploy that likely contributed to South Dakota’s listing high on some periodical per capita death lists. A difficult relationship with tribal governments was made markedly more adversarial. Is there a single thing in South Dakota now better as a result of her time in office?

Another factor in her failure at DHS was her unrelenting, cruel, and misguided antipathy for brown-skinned immigrants. Her “worst of the worst” characterization of individuals targeted by ICE troops was heard over and over and over even after it was indisputably demonstrated to be absolutely not true. Did she really believe there were hundreds of thousands who fit that description?

If so, she should have wised up when the masked agents discovered most of the “worst” were already in jail, or never existed. With few legitimate targets and pushed by a quota, they just started trolling for brown people. The documented despicable tactics by the agents turned even Republicans against the whole campaign. Then came deaths.

Contributing to this failure was her mismanagement. It became quickly apparent her decisions about hiring, training, supervision and discipline were so lacking that many rogue agents were just managing themselves and wildly out of control. Did Noem even involve herself in daily operations? If not, no surprise. If so, whatever was being done only led to more and more ugly incidents.

She could have perhaps survived if not for her complete lack of self-awareness. When questioned, her humorless, filibustering, angry and lying approach made things worse. Simply acknowledging the problems and showing some humanity and cooperation would have helped a lot.

The cheesy costumes didn’t help, either.

Her tactic of sustained talking instead of answering questions was done poorly. Compare how Noem handled her hearing and how Hillary Clinton ate the lunch of Republican accusers in her deposition.

Questioning her personal relationship with a long-time associate was an inappropriate sidetrack and she shouldn’t have been asked about it. However, statements regarding the working role of that person have been challenged as perjury and that may resurface when we once again have a functional Justice Department.

Even if all these elements and other failings (FEMA, private planes) did not exist, one overwhelming factor outweighs everything.

Donald Trump is self-evidently a failure at almost everything he has done except convincing enough voters otherwise. His hiring of this unqualified person based on nothing more than unquestioned loyalty doomed the DHS and is doing the same with Bondi, Kennedy, Patel, Hegseth and so many others. Nothing Noem could have done was likely to have succeeded when managed by this president.

As the country moves on, let us hope the embarrassment of seeing our “former South Dakota governor” on the daily news is over.

Mike Levsen is a former Aberdeen mayor and regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.

Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons

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