Item — HN Reader

>Similar to the linked story here

Not at all.

>the US currently has a President with no political experience

Which is a) known to all and b) considered by supporters to be a virtue, as is often the case for those in public life in many countries.

>who has also hired family members for prominent roles in the government.

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are Senior Advisors to the President, which are by definition positions whose main/only qualifications are "the President trusts them". Like her father, these two aren't paid a salary.[1]

Every US president since Washington, and every human leader since Ugg became chief caveman of the Grugg tribe, has had advisors that he trusts as much as (and, usually, more than) those with official titles below him. A common term for such for presidents is the Kitchen Cabinet.[2] Sometimes the Kitchen Cabinet gets titles to formalize their access to the advisee. In the US that's Senior Advisor to the President; in the UK it's Special Adviser to the Prime Minister;[3] in many countries it's Minister without Portfolio.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/30/trump-white-house-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_adviser_(UK)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_Portfolio

1 comments

When one of your 'advisors' is charged with making peace in the middle east (among other ridiculous responsibilities), is he really an advisor? Was Ivanka acting in an advisory role when she hosted meetings at the UN? C'mon.

>When one of your 'advisors' is charged with making peace in the middle east (among other ridiculous responsibilities), is he really an advisor? Was Ivanka acting in an advisory role when she hosted meetings at the UN?

Kushner is the point man for the Middle East because Trump's attitude is that professional, full-time diplomats have consistently failed for 40 years, so why not try someone different? One of the prerequisites for such a role, arguably the most important one, is that both sides the envoy is mediating for know that said envoy has the president's trust.

As for his wife, again, there are no formal classes on "hosting meetings at the UN" at the Kennedy School or SIPA or Georgetown SFS, nor is there a "hosting meetings about women's rights at the UN" job description at State or anywhere in the executive branch (the existing US delegation to the UN's responsibilities are different). She either does a good job, or she doesn't and Trump sends someone else. Given that Ivanka has now performed the role over multiple years, apparently her father approves of how she's done.

So, in other words, "because Trump thinks it's ok, it's ok." You could have saved a lot of typing.

Everything you said is utterly preposterous. Physycists have failed to come up with a GUT for quite some time now. Should Jared be in charge of that as well? Perhaps Ivanka could do a university tour to shake things up a bit.

What progress have either of these two made on any front exactly? How's the experiment going, objectively? Because what I see is an almost completely ineffective foreign policy strategy and a bunch of appointees whose only real qualifications are being born to wealthy parents.

>So, in other words, "because Trump thinks it's ok, it's ok." You could have saved a lot of typing.

Yes, for these sorts of positions, "because [president] thinks it's OK, it's OK" is the criteria Trump and all of his predecessors have used. If you don't believe me, feel free to try to find a formal, defined qualification for "informal presidential envoy to hopefully get some/any progress done in an area no progress has occurred in four decades", or "host of some meetings at the UN for women's rights and other such causes". I'll wait. The only difference is that in these cases the envoy happens to be related to the president as opposed to say, an old college roommate (Example: Kenneth O'Donnell, whom Kevin Costner portrayed in Thirteen Days), or law school buddy (twenty for Obama early in his administration [1]).

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2008/12/school-buds-20-harvar...

It's quite different from ...

>Everything you said is utterly preposterous. Physycists have failed to come up with a GUT for quite some time now. Should Jared be in charge of that as well?

Something like this, for which there is, in fact, a formal, defined criteria. The fact that you made such a ridiculous and obviously inapt comparison shows how desperate you are.

Your argument is ludicrous. No one is arguing that he can't do what he is doing. The discussion is whether or not he _should_. You can't argue that's it's a good idea, or that his decisions have produced any results, so you just continue to repeat the same nonsense. Talking to you is a waste of time.

>The fact that you made such a ridiculous and obviously inapt comparison shows how desperate you are

"Inept" is, I believe, the word you were searching for.

> No one is arguing that he can't do what he is doing. The discussion is whether or not he _should_.

Which is an inherently subjective argument, which is my point, as opposed to your saying that Kushner and Ivanka Trump are prima facie unqualified for their roles. Since you now know you can't prove this, you've shifted the goalposts.

>You can't argue that's it's a good idea, or that his decisions have produced any results

No, the onus is on you to prove that Kushner and Ivanka are inherently less qualified for what they are doing than, say, the examples I provided in my previous comment. Since being Robert Kennedy's college roommate and football teammate automatically means advising on national security matters in the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis, amirite?

I am not saying that O'Donnell was inherently unqualified for his role. On the contrary, for a position like his (identical to Kushner's and Ivanka's, by the way; just the title is different), being trusted by the person you advise is as important a criteria for such a role as any other. JFK trusted O'Donnell to work hard to give him good advice. Period. End of story.

Maybe Kushner will spend eight years over two Trump terms as Trump's Middle East envoy and no progress will be made in terms of Jewish-Arab peace. Such results would be ... about on par with all of his predecessors from seven different administrations over 40 years.

>"Inept" is, I believe, the word you were searching for.

Wrong again. "Inapt" is correct; your comparison of a position with formal, defined qualifications for versus positions without such is, as I said, an inapt one.