What do you think of Trump's picks?

I've met one nominee. Within 5 minutes, he asked me, “Can I get elected President without getting married?”

A number of years ago, I went out to dinner with somebody who is now one of President-Elect Trump’s nominees for high office. I try to be discreet about personal interactions I have outside the online public arena, so I won’t use his name.

But he’s remarkably outgoing and frank with complete strangers, such as myself.

This was at a classic hotel, I forget which, in Hollywood or West Hollywood. It boasted perhaps the darkest restaurant in SoCal. It had been a favorite of Nancy Reagan when she wanted to catch up over lunch with old friends like Frank Sinatra without anybody at other tables being able to quite be sure in the artificial gloaming that that really was the First Lady and the Chairman of the Board.

There were four guests: the [future] nominee, the guy who knew the nominee and set the dinner up, myself, and an impressive lady of middling years: fine career, happy marriage, kids, conservative fundraiser, the kind of mature woman who gives good advice on personal matters.

The guest of honor almost immediately brought up to us two strangers the question apparently most on his mind (all quotations are approximate recollections):

“Can I get elected President without getting married?”

That’s a pretty interesting question for somebody you just met to ask you.

I replied to the effect that I don’t know that it’s impossible to be a Bachelor President in the 21st Century, but getting elected President is really hard in any case, and, clearly, doing it without a wife and kids would be even harder.

The sensible lady said: “No.”

Our answers didn’t make the nominee happy.

The lady and I then briefly extolled how domestic monogamy made us happy and it might make the nominee happy too.

He replied something like, “But is anybody who is married really happy?”

I shall follow his future career with great interest.