Principal Architect can mean literally anything, and in many more enterprisey places guys with such titles are often basically wankers who don't contribute much or are even a net negative for the company. And yes, in such cases getting to this role is all about appearances and politics. This is confirmed by the market when such guy has to leave the company for whatever reason and cannot get another job that is even remotely close in pay and ostensible responsibility.

A good rule of thumb on the value of the architect is IMO whether they can even check out, build and run the code. The kind of people I'm talking about often didn't even bother to get privileges to version control; they reside strictly in email&powerpoint land.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me and a good place to end up in one's mid-30s. He'd already been a Lead before then. It sounds like he was hired almost directly into the position given the mention of discussion with the VP of engineering before hiring. That was probably critical so would count as "networking", but it sounds like the guy had a speaking and consulting business before then.

Technical merit is very hard to assess, and it gets harder at the senior level, but having a public speaking profile makes it much easier for people to see someone's talent.