As a rule, a president should be able to staff his administration with anyone he chooses, as long as they're not demonstrably incompetent or crooked.

But I have to agree with this article in The Washington Post which takes John Bolton, the president's nominee to be U.N. ambassador, to task for appearing at his confirmation hearing wearing cut-off jeans, a wife-beater shirt and ratty baseball cap.

John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, desperately needs a haircut. It does not have to be a $600 Sally Hershberger cut. Bolton simply needs the basics. Tidy the curling, unruly locks at the nape of his neck, tame the volume at the crown, reel in the wings flapping above his ears, and broker a compromise between his sand-colored mop and his snow-colored mustache.

He needs to do this, not because he should be minding the recommendations of men's fashion magazines or grooming experts but because when he settled in before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week to answer questions about his record, his philosophy and his intentions at the U.N., he looked as though he did not even have enough respect for the proceedings to bother combing his hair -- or, for that matter, straightening his tie, or wearing a shirt that did not put his neck in a chokehold. Bolton was one wrinkled suit away from being an insolent mess.

Oh, I must've read the article wrong the first time.

And newspaper publishers wonder why they're losing subscribers and no longer command readers' trust like they once did? Maybe silly articles like this one, on the front page of the paper's Style section are the answer.