Expect to see and hear a lot of Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) over the next few weeks.

Just don't expect much of what you see and hear to be about his daily governance of Maryland.

Hogan's political memoir, "Still Standing: Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic, and the Toxic Politics That Divide America," is due out on July 28, and already it's getting plenty of attention.

As one of the rare "Never Trump" Republicans in public office, everything Hogan says and does is catnip for national political pundits and cable chat shows. His competent management of the COVID-19 crisis stands in sharp contrast to the chaos and crazy emanating from the White House. And as President Trump's poll numbers tank, Hogan seems more emboldened than ever about sharply criticizing his party's leader.

We have two takes on Hogan today:

The first is a look at the ramifications of the book excerpt that was published in The Washington Post yesterday, detailing Hogan's procurement of COVID-19 testing kits from South Korea and his take on Trump's management. This is probably Hogan's biggest public criticisms of Trump to date, and firmly establishes him as a player whenever the GOP has to pick up the pieces from the Trump era.

The second is commentary from our editor, Josh Kurtz, on how Hogan's finely-tuned political radar is going to need some adjusting as he tries to navigate the choppy waters of national politics. Hogan's Trump-bashing is what generates headlines and attracts the national spotlight. But he seems only too happy to criticize national Democrats as well, despite his public paeans to civility and bipartisanship -- and his contempt for Annapolis Democrats is well-established.

During a pandemic and an economic crisis and a period of racial reckoning, political pursuits sometimes seem frivolous. But it's hard for us to ignore what our governor is up to.