Ivanka Trump’s new job

By V.v.B | CHICAGO

IVANKA TRUMP is not the first presidential child to be a close assistant to her father. Anna Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1944 and accompanied Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta conference of world leaders in February 1945. George H.W. Bush listened to the advice of his sons George and Jeb. Yet Ms Trump is the first child whose spouse also plays an important advisory role. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, both have security clearance, access to top-level presidential meetings and offices in the West Wing of the White House, home to the offices of the president. Their roles have raised eyebrows ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s 45th president.

After a particularly rough week for his new administration, Mr Trump tried to calm mounting concerns over potential conflicts of interest among members of his family. On March 29th the White House announced that Ms Trump would become an unpaid federal employee, with the title “assistant to the president”, subject to the same rules as all other federal employees. Her appointment comes after Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, two ethics lawyers, expressed concern in a letter to Donald McGahn, counsel of the White House, “about the highly unusual and inappropriate arrangement that is being proposed for Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, to play a formalised role in the White House without being required to comply with the ethics and disclosure requirements that apply to White House employees”. On the day the White House made its announcement, Elizabeth Warren, a pugnacious Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Tom Carper, a Democratic senator from Delaware, also fired off a letter to the Office of Government Ethics in which they bemoaned the confusion over potential conflicts of interest for Ms Trump, a businesswoman with her own fashion and jewellery label, as close confidante of the president.

Will the formalisation of Ms Trump’s role appease critics? It will probably depend on how the White House handles several open questions, raised by Ms Warren and Mr Carper in their letter. “If Ms Trump was an official government employee in the White House, what financial disclosures would be required of her?” they ask. What divestments would be required of her and how would the Office of Government Ethics or other relevant officials determine whether she had complied with these divestment requirements? What would the consequences be if she did not agree to divestments and disclosures? Which government officials would be responsible for determining and enforcing these consequences? From which topics would she be required to recuse herself in advising the president or otherwise acting in an official capacity?

In becoming an unpaid federal employee Ms Trump follows her husband, who is a senior advisor of the president. Though neither have any experience in government policy, they have been given tasks, which in previous administrations required years of experience. In addition to advising the president on the Middle East, Mr Kushner, a young real-estate entrepreneur was named on March 26th leader of the new “White House Office of American Innovation”, which will tap business executives for ideas on the privatisation of some government functions. He is also said to be involved in efforts to combat America’s opioid epidemic. Ms Trump will be her father's "eyes and ears" and advise him on family and other policies.

The Onion, a satirical magazine joked that, faced with a multitude of tasks, Mr Kushner transferred “Solve Middle East Crisis” to next week’s to-do list. “I was really hoping to at least knock out the Arab-Israeli conflict before the weekend, but this week’s kind of gotten out of hand. It’ll be fine, though—I’ll just carve out an hour or two next week, hunker down in my office, and sort it all out then.”

Given that some of the world’s most experienced politicians, from Tony Blair to John Kerry, made little progress with their efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, Mr Trump may have unwittingly set up Mr Kushner for failure. And it remains to be seen how the poised Ms Trump will fare in the utterly unfamiliar environment of government policy and Washington politics. The photo-ops with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who visited Washington, DC earlier this month, were a boon. Advising a president whose approval ratings slipped to 35% this week, one of the lowest recorded ratings in modern American history, will be a bit tougher.