We Are Being Governed by Unserious People

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

Is there a heart somewhere inside Kristi Noem, underneath all those costumes, behind all that lacquer? She makes no attempt to show it. Whether killing an inconvenient dog or slandering Minnesotans gunned down by federal agents, she picks cruelty over compassion — and, sadly, seems to equate that choice with strength.

Does she have a pinch, even a grain, of modesty? She spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on advertisements for, well, Kristi Noem. That seemed to peeve the president. From his underlings he expects compliments, not competition.

But another, less colorful trait of Noem’s should have disturbed him — and should unsettle us — even more, because it’s the root of so much of what’s wrong with Trump’s White House: an explanation of its dysfunctions, a key to its disgraces, a signal to the world of how fickle and foolish America has become. She’s unprofessional.

During her mercifully terminated stint as the homeland security secretary, she made extravagant claims without much if any attempt to ascertain their veracity. She used government resources in questionable ways. She treated public service as private amusement. That’s not how true professionals behave. But it’s how many senior officials in the Trump administration do.

And it’s a big part of my and many other observers’ profound apprehensions about the military strikes in Iran. We can’t trust that they got the degree of deliberation that war demands. We can’t assume temperance, reflection, rationality. Those hallmarks of professionalism aren’t values to which the Trump administration subscribes.

It’s a twisted culture, its warp and warts evident not only in the shenanigans at federal departments that routinely draw scrutiny but also in the melodrama at those that typically don’t. The inspector general for the Department of Labor, for example, is investigating allegations of professional misconduct by its leader, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and several of her top aides. Chavez-DeRemer has been accused of using department resources for personal trips (something Noem is said to have done, too), having an affair with a member of her security detail (hold on to that thought), taking department workers to strip clubs (is this the new morale-building?) and drinking alcohol on the job.

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Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.  Instagram  Threads  @FrankBruni • Facebook

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