Is Mark Esper the best man for the job of US Defence Secretary?

I think I'm right in saying that Donald Trump is the first president in history to have had three acting defence secretaries. There's a new one right now. He's Richard Spencer. Most people probably don't realise that Spencer's predecessor as acting defence secretary, Mark Esper, had to give up the job he had held for only a few weeks and leave his smart office in the Pentagon because under the rules of....whatever....he couldn't be the official non-acting defence secretary while he is awaiting confirmation by the Senate following his nomination for the role by the president. So while the Senate big wigs consider whether to confirm hs nomination, Esper had to walk down the corridor and return to his previous job as Army Secretary, while Richard Spencer, Navy Secretary - and a jolly good one - who is next in line to the throne as it were, stepped into Esper's shoes and became an instant acting defence secretary. If the confirmation process which began yesterday is short-lived, Spencer will then swiftly return to his office as Navy Secretary and Esper will walk down the corridor from the Army Secretary's office to the office of the Secretary of Defence. I wonder if they will pass each other as they do the office swaps. In all the switch-arounds it's almost possible to forget that the first acting defence secretary was Pat Shanahan who looked set to become defence secretary proper until the FBI discovered there had been some domestic trouble in his family involving a touch of violence way back in the past, and Shanahan resigned to avoid having it all brought up again every time he appeared in public as Pentagon chief. So out went Shanahan, in came Esper, out went Esper, in came Spencer and, soon, out goes Spencer and in comes Esper. All very bizarre, perhaps only possible in good old Washington. The strange thing is that for my money the best of the three involved in the soft shoe shuffle is Richard Spencer. As they say in the sailing world, I like the cut of his jib. He always seemed to me to be a strong character who made good and quick decisions. Take the very recent case of Admiral Bill Moran, sleighted to be the next US Chief of Naval Operations. When it emerged that Admiral Moran was still seeking the professional advice of a former Pentagon public affairs officer who had been forced into premature retirement with a reprimand for making unwelcome sexual advances to a number of female co-workers while dressed as Santa Claus at a boozy office Christmas party, Spencer confronted him and basically said "you're out". No messing about. He didn't want the head of the Navy to have even a hint of a stain on his character. That's proper decision-making. Tough but right. Now Spencer is looking for a replacement among three-star as well as four-star offices and you can bet he will pick the best man even if he is junior in rank to the top dogs. Esper seems to me to be a rather boring-looking bureaucrat, the type who will do an ok job but without inspiring anyone, least of all the men and women in uniform. Why on earth did Trump select him? I guess because he didn't want another Jim Mattis, the old warrior with combat in his bones. Esper served his country as a relatively junior infantry officer. That's great. But a charismatic figure? I don't think so.