People who are casually following the recent announcements from President-elect Donald J. 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. If, during his first administration, Mr. Trump boasted of his generals from “central casting,” now, it seems, he has applied the same principle to the whole shebang.
Tom Homan, his pick for “border czar,” is from “central casting,” he announced in a campaign speech.
Kristi Noem, the choice for homeland security, is “beautiful,” he crowed during a rally.
Matt Gaetz, the highly controversial choice for attorney general who later withdrew his name from consideration, and his wife, Ginger, are “a seriously good-looking couple,” Mr. Trump said.
While it is easy to dismiss this focus as superficial distraction, to mock Mr. Trump’s reported penchant for watching videos of potential senior staff members to see how they look and perform onscreen, 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 Mr. 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 department of performing and media arts 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.
Mr. Trump has always understood this. It is one of the lessons of his own life, in which playing a businessman on TV, manifesting the part of the ultimate executive, was a recipe for success.
“Part of his superpower is his ability to tap into the popular idea of what a good leader looks like,” said Tara Setmayer, a founder of the Seneca Project, a bipartisan super PAC dedicated to supporting moderate women. If it worked for him, why shouldn’t he apply the same approach to his senior staff members? Especially the ones who are public-facing, “face” being the operative word. The people whose pictures will represent the actions of the administration in reports and speeches and social media posts. Many are already recognizable from TV (at least among a certain part of Mr. Trump’s base), with all the associations of proficiency and responsibility that being a host, or an expert talking head, evoke.
“They are comforting,” Ms. Sheppard said, “because they are familiar.” Not just familiar from Fox News, the former home of several of the picks but familiar because they represent a return to traditional archetypes of power, business and gender as mediated through a Hollywood lens in the latter part of the 20th century. You know, that mythic time when Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko and “The American President,” Mr. Trump’s career took off, and power looked mostly white and mostly male. He has built a supporting cast not just in his own image, but in the image of the world he promised to (re)create during his campaign.
His choices all have “perfect jawlines,” David Remnick wrote in The New Yorker, the kind that, in the case of the men, could be described as clenched with purpose or jutting forward like a dare. They have adopted both the Trump uniform — navy suit, white shirt, red tie — and the Trump look. Most of the men have full heads of hair, like a biblical symbol of their power: Marco Rubio, the pick for State, combs his neatly to the side like a choirboy; Doug Burgum, the choice for Interior, brushes his back from his forehead, as if blown by a wilderness breeze; Scott Bessent, for Treasury, styles his in a carefully controlled master of the universe swoop.
There are exceptions. For example, Scott Turner, Mr. Trump’s choice for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has a shaved pate, though his manliness is not in doubt, given that he is a former N.F.L. player. “Manliness” itself is part of the sell, as it is with Pete Hegseth, the pick for secretary of defense, who is known for his brush cut and his tattoos, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chosen to head Health and Human Services, who did shirtless push-ups in public during his campaign. (Mr. Trump, of course, spent time on the campaign trail praising his own “beautiful body.”) The Kennedy squint is almost a perfect twin to the Trump squint.
By contrast, the women, with their cascading hair and camera-ready makeup, offer a Miss Universe-Breck Girl version of gender that offsets the power of the positions they might be about to assume. Pam Bondi, whom Mr. Trump picked for attorney general after Mr. Gaetz’s withdrawal, has the glossy blond locks of Ivanka Trump and her sister-in-law Lara. So does Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s choice for press secretary.
Ms. Noem, the pick for homeland security secretary, famously remade herself in the mode of Melania, with wavy brown tresses and generous eyelashes, a look that has also been adopted by Elise Stefanik, the United Nations ambassador in waiting — as well as, on occasion, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who was tapped for labor secretary.
Indeed, the only two women on the senior staff with short hair are Linda McMahon, the pick for the Department of Education, whose history as a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment is its own sort of toughness credential (and gives her a sort of bossy school principal air), and Susie Wiles, who, as chief of staff, will play her part primarily behind the scenes.
The effect is to create a “narrative about the performance of masculinity, the performance of femininity,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” “It’s a very important tool in marketing Trump’s ideas.”
It’s a clichéd response to the fears around trans rights stoked by the Trump “they/them” campaign ad that offers a return to gender stereotypes past — and a sort of Hallmark cover for actions expected to come.
In that sense, Ms. Sheppard said, Mr. Trump has simply gone from “playing a version of himself as a star to being the star, the executive producer and the show runner of the country.”
If, after all, the goal is to radically remake the institutions of government, who better to sell that proposal than a group of officials who look as if they were formed in the celluloid image of the institutions? The ones who may not have the usual qualifications but effectively play the roles of experts on TV?
That may not make a difference for the senators who likely will have to confirm Mr. Trump’s choices. But for most of the public, scrolling through the news on their phones as they look for Black Friday deals and the latest memes, those images, typecast as they are, come with an implied authority.
In this sense, Ms. Setmayer said, “perception is reality.” And when it comes to perception, appearance matters.
“It’s one way you airbrush history,” Ms. Ben-Ghiat said.
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