Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The headline on this blog appeared over a recent column by Frank Bruni, who writes for the New York Times.

I used it, but another alternative could be this as applied to Donald Trump and the minions who “work” [do they really work?] for him:  Looks matter more than competence.

Several of these minions have jobs for Trump that they did not gain based on their experience or credentials.  But, often on camera, Trump thought they looked good, so he gave them high-level jobs.

Here are a few paragraphs from Bruni who always uses words very well:

• Befitting his home in the Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. practices the politics of narcissism:  If I embrace it, it must be right.  If I embody it, you should emulate it.  I flaunt a sun-sizzled appearance, so you should have the same leathery license.
• Kevin Warsh has a decent résumé to qualify to serve as Federal Reserve chair, but he also has signaled obeisance to a president.  Warsh has an additional asset.  “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’” Trump wrote in the late January social media post that announced Warsh’s selection.  According to an article by Eva Roytburg in Fortune Magazine at that time, Trump once told Warsh, during a 2019 meeting in the White House, “You’re a really handsome guy.”
• To Trump, that’s an important credential.  All the world’s a television show, “central casting” is a recurring compliment and handsomeness or beauty establishes a kind of superiority, which in turn bequeaths confidence, which then begets dominance. By his zoology, an aviary of peacocks equals a menagerie of lions.
• Never have I witnessed a White House so devoted to surfaces. Surfaces caked with makeup.  Surfaces puffed up with hair spray. Surfaces glossed with gold.  Surfaces that glitter blue — or someday might, if the over-budget overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ever works out as promised.
• Appearances simultaneously obscure reality and substitute for it. Your sheen is your success, and you are what you impersonate. Trump has long been known to judge potential cabinet secretaries and military leaders on whether they look the part, and that thinking factored into his embrace of Warsh.
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s habit of sharing videos of his workouts would be seen as a grossly self-enamored distraction.  In Trump’s circle, they’re a testament to his tenacity.  The defense secretary posted one such ode to his own musculature shortly before the beginning of the war with Iran, as U.S. warships headed toward that region; it showed him doing a bench press as the soldiers whom he’d gathered around him cheered, his wife applauded and, I guess, the ayatollahs quivered. Nothing spells imminent doom like a cabinet member’s pecs.
• To Trump, pitch and packaging are everything.  Perfect them and you don’t have to worry about the product itself.  That thinking informs the cabinet secretaries’ physical preening just as it explains the president’s oratorical preening — all those ludicrous superlatives — and his emphasis on costumes, scenery and slogans.

Then, a story appeared in the New York Times this morning to underline Trump’s priority:

As he spoke at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, “The president got the most out of the crowd when he was being apolitical, hamming it up with the coasties as he welcomed them onstage and teased them about how attractive they were.  ‘I hate good-looking men,’ he growled, after a young man named Matthew came up to shake his hand.  A cadet named Thomas walked up next.  ‘Look at the muscles on this guy,’ Trump observed.”

So, again, looks over competence.  That’s Trump.