Ivanka the Inevitable?

After four years as a "senior adviser" in her father's presidential administration, Ivanka Trump seems to be preparing for a political career of her own. If she wins national office, she will use her power just as her father has: for the Trumps.

NEW YORK – In her autobiography, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, described an incident involving her father and his second wife, Marla Maples. The family was supposed to take their private plane to Florida, but Maples was late. Just as they were about to take off, a mere five minutes behind schedule, Ivanka saw a car pull onto the tarmac. Maples rushed out. But when Ivanka pointed this out, her father refused to have the pilot stop. His “frantic and frazzled” wife would just have to watch from the tarmac as their plane disappeared into the clouds.

One might think Trump’s behavior heartless and cruel. One might see an empty, ego-driven bid to assert control over those who fail to obey. But, in Ivanka’s eyes, it was a necessary life lesson in punctuality. Decades later, she seems to have internalized many of her father’s teachings in callousness, added a dutiful Stepford Wife veneer, and established herself as his most formidable – and dangerous – heir.

Five years ago, I would not have wasted a moment thinking about Ivanka Trump. I would have happily left her celebrity life – first as a model, then as an executive of her ersatz fashion label – to the tabloids. I would never have written about her father, either. Yet this gold-plated family’s takeover of much of America’s political, psychic, and even spiritual life leaves little choice but to pay attention.

This is not only because the patriarch served a term as US president. Just as Trump made all his adult children senior vice presidents at the Trump Organization, he turned his White House into another failing branch of the family business. For Ivanka, that meant becoming a “senior...