Send In The Clowns

     Considered rigorously, the proposition that government should be run like a business makes as little sense as saying that business should be run like government.
     Yes, the federal government is bigger than it has a valid need to be. Yes, it is expensive and at times extravagantly wasteful. Yes, it is peopled with careerists who believe they know what is best for the rest of us. Yes, our leaders have kicked this can forward for decades. And now comes the Trump administration to offer the remedy of ...
     New spending and nepotism.
     A new agency will be called The White House Office of American Innovation. It will be tasked with bringing a business mindset to the operations of the federal bureaucracy.  It will be headed by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who displayed his business acumen at an early age by rocketing to the top of his daddy's real estate company.
     This escapade is consistent with the record of a president who has, in just a few weeks in office:
     -- Issued executive orders the courts won't swallow.
     -- Proposed a budget the Congress won't pass.
     -- Crashed and burned for a jalopy of a health care law that he didn't understand.
     -- Spilled scandal all over himself.
     -- Advanced job-creation measures that won't really work.
     -- Commissioned propaganda so preposterous that his own minions can't sustain it.
     Kushner and wife Ivanka -- who has her own office in the White House -- are entangled in a real estate and investment empire so widespread that ethics experts are goggling at the potential for conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, Kushner will find that an organ of public service cannot successfully mimic an organ of private wealth. He will also find that Trump's  zeal for limited government is restricted to programs he doesn't like. Both of them will encounter a corollary attitude in Congress, where members are cordial to reforms affecting some other member's constituents.
     Thus the Office of Innovation offers to be another train wreck -- unless the Trumpsters plan to take credit for exploring new ways to abuse the public's trust. And thus the tenor of the administration remains as set by a president who surrounds himself with grifters, lapdogs and kin.
     This White House radiates a paranoia not seen since the Nixon years. (Trump has appointed political commissars to keep an eye on his own Cabinet secretaries.) It reeks of casual greed. But the overriding body language of the administration is amateurism. Gaffe follows gaffe, each to the accompaniment of clumsy lies.
     The Trump administration is in danger on several counts, not least the mounting evidence that his people engaged in heavy petting with the Russians.  Even if he survives that one, he risks being deemed feckless.  His presidency is staggering.  He personally is staggering.  He has become such an object of ridicule that the Comedy Central Channel has created a weekly show centered on lampooning him.
     So far The Donald, who likes to style himself a man of quick action, is on his way to showing in record time that he simply can't cut the mustard.