Casting the Cabinet

People who are casually following the recent announcements from President-elect Donald Trump about how he intends to staff the upper ranks of the executive branch could be forgiven for thinking they were reading about a beauty contest, not political appointments.

- By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

If, during his first administration, Trump boasted of his generals from "central casting," now, it seems, he has applied the same principle to the whole shebang.

Thomas Homan, his pick for "border czar," is from "central casting," he announced.

Kristi Noem, the choice for homeland security secretary, is "beautiful," he crowed during a rally.

Matt Gaetz, the controversial choice for attorney general who later withdrew his name from consideration, and his wife, Ginger, are "a seriously good-looking couple," Trump said.

While it is easy to dismiss this focus as superficial distraction, to mock Trump's reported penchant for watching videos of potential senior staff members to see how they look and perform on screen, and to condemn it as the latest expression of the reality TV-ification of government, underestimating the idea is a mistake. Not just because of the controversies over some of the names or their very public loyalty to Trump, but because of what they embody about his worldview.

They've got a look.

"It's an aesthetic strategy," said Samantha N. Sheppard, an associate professor in the performing and media arts department at Cornell University. "Casting is cultural production. It's a way we build ideas about race, gender, credibility." It's a technique for populating a specific picture of the world.

Trump has always understood this. It is one of the lessons of his own life, in which playing a business-person on TV, manifesting the part of the ultimate executive, was a recipe for success.