Who does a better job of hiring "only the best people"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It’s no secret that the incumbent President of the United States and the incumbent Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church are just this side of being overt ideological opponents. All recent Republican administrations have found common cause with the Holy See on issues involving reproductive and population policy, but there are numerous other issues on which Pope Francis and Donald Trump are poles apart, most famously environmental policy and immigration; moreover, it often seems that the further apart Francis and Trump are on an issue, the more personally investing that issue is to both. However, they also have certain commonalities. Some of these commonalities, such as the fact that they’re both brash, relatively uncouth personalities in comparison to their urbane, cosmopolitan predecessors, are morally neutral. However, others are deeply troubling, most notably the fact that both were originally elected with a mandate to “drain the swamp” and flip the script for a decrepit and untrustworthy governing structure, only to almost immediately start doing things by the swamp’s playbook after all.

In particular, despite Trump’s now-infamous promise to hire “only the best and most serious people”, both Donald Trump and Pope Francis have repeatedly appointed, promoted, or otherwise furthered or attempted to further the careers of truly horrific subordinates—abusers, enablers, grifters, incompetents, ideological extremists, and more. In absolute fairness, both are appointing from within preexisting talent pools—the worldwide Catholic clergy in one case, a combination of rightist media personalities and Bushworld jetsam in the other—that have never exactly been known for the sterling quality of leadership that they produce. However, since even within these unprepossessing ranks there are some people of much higher moral caliber than others, this is no excuse.

My question is: which of these leaders, in your opinion, is better at in fact hiring “only the best people”? Put another way, which of them has succeeded in furthering the careers of more people who aren’t bottom-feeding scum of the lowest order (even if you might still strongly disagree with their worldviews)? Note that I would never suggest that Pope Francis is anywhere even remotely close to being as personally repellent as Donald Trump; rather, this question is about their personnel decisions as leaders of the world’s most powerful nation and the world’s most powerful organized religious body.

[afleitch]

Trump hires women FF