The swamp is rooting for Kushner
The favored son-in-law has inside track over Bannon, but a mighty steep learning curve
Jared Kushner has only been in Washington for several months, but he’s already benefiting from a law of bureaucratic nature: The right rivals make you look good.
In a White House awash in internecine warfare, the most prominent combatant is Mr. Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-inlaw, who has been given a wideranging portfolio. Mr. Kushner’s chief adversary is Steve Bannon, the nationalist champion of the alt-right who says he wants to deconstruct the administrative state. Not surprisingly, the capital establishment, not eager to be deconstructed, despises Mr. Bannon and thus puts its hopes on the 36-yearold Kushner.
Mr. Kushner’s backers, including some closeted Democrats, argue that he’s getting Mr. Trump to govern in a rational way. Some contend that he’ll turn Mr. Trump into a mainstream Republican or even persuade the president to return to his roots as a conservative Democrat. Both notions are preposterous. The best critics can hope for is that Mr. Kushner will diminish the influence of Trumpist extremists, especially Mr. Bannon. The inside-the-Beltway betting is on Mr. Kushner.
Internal White House friction isn’t unusual and there usually is an establishment favorite. Sometimes the favorite is also the best person: in President Ronald Reagan’s White House, for example, the pragmatic Chief of Staff James Baker was more talented than his arch-conservative rival, the White House counselor Ed Meese. In President Bill Clinton’s administration, by contrast, the conventional wisdom was that the Washington insider and White House counselor David Gergen would save the president from his inexperienced political aides; that was wrong.
The most effective White House aides have been skilled in the ways of Washington and politics: Think of James Baker and Howard Baker under Reagan, or Leon Panetta and John Podesta under Clinton. One Trump booster this week put Mr. Kushner in an even loftier category, likening him to George Washington’s trusted confidante Alexander Hamilton.
There is no evidence that Mr. Kushner is anywhere near this league. To put it politely, he faces a steep and challenging learning curve.
Yet he and a network of supporters depicted him during the presidential campaign as a brilliant businessman who devised important technology and media strategies for his father-in-law. In that narrative, he floated above the insult-driven ugliness of the Trump campaign. In a Forbes article that appeared two weeks after the election — “How Jared Kushner won Trump the White House” — he waved off media speculation “since I don’t talk to the press.” This was during an interview.
In the first 11 weeks of the administration, he has successfully avoided any association with Mr. Trump’s belligerence.
That makes Steve Bannon the perfect foil. (One caveat for those planning Mr. Bannon’s farewell: He is well-versed in history and has a dark worldview that resonates with Mr. Trump. This is unlikely, however, to give him enough ammunition to defeat the family guy.)
The Washington establishment’s rooting interest has blurred its focus on Mr. Kushner’s conflicts of interest. Mr. Kushner, whose net worth could be as high as $700 million, only partially divested his substantial holdings. He retains extensive real estate assets, including an interest in his family’s firm, and he has access to lines of credit with at least 10 banks.
He has enlisted a high-powered Democratic lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and has attested that he has met all legal requirements and taken the extra step of working with the Office of Government Ethics. Any remaining conflicts, she has said, are “pretty narrow and very manageable.”
Yet Mr. Kushner met privately after Mr. Trump won in November with a government-connected Chinese firm to talk about selling a piece of his family’s financially troubled building at 666 Fifth Ave. in New York. After the meeting was revealed, the deal didn’t materialize. In getting his White House security clearance, Mr. Kushner initially neglected to mention, as required, recent meetings with foreign officials, including top Russians.
Ethics experts have charged that Mr. Kushner’s dealings don’t pass the smell test.
“Jared Kushner is in an untenable position,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a good-government group. “Given his unprecedented amount of responsibilities and his very substantial assets he has inherent conflicts in dealing with taxes, real estate, Dodd-Frank banking, and some foreign policy areas.” For example, any tax reform measure will have significant impact on real estate and banking interests.
By all accounts, Mr. Kushner is a bright, personable, polite young man. He’s far from the first 36-yearold to occupy a White House office. Most of the other ones, though, started as junior aides. If Mr. Kushner’s wife was anybody but Ivanka Trump, that’s what he’d be.