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ONE LESSONFBIMAGAYour browser does not support the element. Donald Trump took from his first term is that personnel are everything. That could explain the blistering pace of nominations to his administration in the week since he won re-election. Unfortunately, that same insight could also explain Mr Trump’s choices to become his most important lieutenants, including the nomination for attorney-general of Matt Gaetz, a cartoonishly divisive Florida congressman, who is despised even by many in his own party. Too many of them seem to have been selected mainly because their personal loyalty to Mr Trump will be unbound by any scruple.As this was published, Mr Trump had made around . Some of his picks are amply qualified—, his no-nonsense chief of staff, say; or , a former Green Beret, who will become his national security adviser. You do not have to share Marco Rubio’s hawkishness to recognise that the senator from Florida could make a good secretary of state. Others, such as , are unorthodox and risky—and fraught with potential conflicts of interest—but, who knows, could turn out to be inspired.However, other nominations are an ill omen for Mr Trump’s second term. If he has his way, the Pentagon will be run by Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and host on Fox News, who has made a career decrying “woke” officers. The director of national intelligence will be Tulsi Gabbard, who has taken an apocalyptic and faintly conspiratorial view of America’s mission of spreading democracy.And then there is Mr Gaetz. Attorneys-general owe their first loyalty to the law, but Mr Gaetz has been the subject of endless Congressional ethics inquiries. He was investigated, though never prosecuted, over allegations of sex-trafficking a minor by the , an agency he would oversee. Given Mr Trump’s campaign talk of retribution, the independence of the Department of Justice is more important than ever. Yet after Jeff Sessions, as attorney-general, recused himself in an investigation into Mr Trump’s alleged links with Russia, Mr Gaetz accused him of having Stockholm syndrome.There is a pattern here. When Mr Trump has the whip hand—over the State Department, say—he appoints conventional candidates. When he suspects that the bureaucracy will resist him, he favours people who will fight the institutions they are supposed to be running.You might say that Mr Trump was elected to take on Washington. But he has no mandate to wreck departments with the power to make war and prosecute citizens. On the day Mr Hegseth was nominated to the Pentagon, Republicans close to Mr Trump were reported to have a hit list of officers linked to General Mark Milley, a former top soldier who condemned Mr Trump as unfit to be president. America should not pick its generals using political loyalty tests.The Senate, which has the power to approve or reject Mr Trump’s nominees, made its own appointment this week, when Republican senators picked John Thune, from South Dakota, to become majority leader. Mr Trump had intimated that he preferred Rick Scott, a loyalist.Mr Trump’s choices amount to another loyalty test, this time for the Senate, where moderate Republicans must now set limits on the next president. Mr Thune should start as he means to go on, by ensuring that the Senate exercises its right to vet appointments—and that a clear majority rejects those who, like Ms Gabbard, Mr Hegseth and especially Mr Gaetz, are manifestly unsuitable.
