Editorial Board
Jared Kushner Versus the Bureaucracy
Can the president’s son-in-law succeed where decades of reformers have failed? Color us skeptical.
It’s harder than you think.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/PoolIt’s been a preoccupation of rulers since Hammurabi: How do you make the bureaucrats behave? For at least three decades, the prevailing answer of governments the world over has been to try to bring some corporate know-how and efficiency to bear on bloated public services. President Donald Trump is about to learn just why that’s so hard.
The White House announced this week that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top adviser, will oversee an initiative called the Office of American Innovation. The idea is to create “a SWAT team of strategic consultants” who can get the government to run more like “a great American company.”