When Trump behaves, word goes out that Ivanka or husband Jared Kushner had his ear. Credit:AP She won't be engaging this riddle in her new book, Women Who Work, due out in early May, and I say that not because I know what's in it - I don't - but because I know Ivanka, or at least I've been watching her closely for a while. She doesn't take responsibility, not where dear old dad is concerned. She takes advantage, all the while asking us to be grateful for her presence beside him. When he behaves, word goes out that she or her husband, Jared Kushner, had his ear. When he doesn't, word goes out that it wasn't their fault, that they can do only so much and that if they hadn't valiantly moved to Washington, well, think about how much worse off we'd all be. There's a big problem with this spin: His behaviour wouldn't matter if he weren't sitting on such a lofty throne, and they helped to put him there. They empowered the mad king. Now they want credit for mitigating the madness.

Ivanka has been by her father's side since he announced his candidacy. Credit:AP More than that, they want inoculation, so that after they've savoured his reign, they're spared the stain and can return without wound or shame to the social circles in which they long travelled, where Steve Bannon is no hero and Planned Parenthood no villain. Saturday Night Live had something to say about that. The show's most recent episode included a mock commercial in which Ivanka, played by Scarlett Johansson, hawks a new signature fragrance: Complicit. It's for "the woman who could stop all this but won't." Ivanka looks lovingly into a mirror - and sees her father staring back. Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner. Credit:AP I don't think she could stop all this, and I don't expect her to undermine him. But she's under no obligation to prop him up.

From the moment when he announced his candidacy at Trump Tower in June 2015, her actions have far exceeded the demands of filial loyalty. And they're not explained by some profound ideological affinity with her father, because she doesn't spout ideology - just gauzy platitudes. Check out the Wise Words section of ivankatrump.com. It's an overstuffed flea market of threadbare aphorisms ("never ever settle,""work to become, not to acquire,""keep your head up,""there is enough success for everyone") in fanciful typography and pinkish hues. In campaigning full-force for her father, she and her brothers seemed at once to be repaying a debt - they'd profited so enormously from the Trump name - and hopping aboard a ride to greater dividends still. But she stood out, because she in particular insisted on a veneer of virtue. She alone marketed a persona of goodness. That persona turned her into more than just a surrogate for her father, more even than a character witness. She was his alibi. He couldn't be guilty of vileness toward women because he had produced a woman as enlightened and gracious as Ivanka, who not only stood with him but spoke up for him at the Republican National Convention, assuring the world of his benevolence. The next day her Twitter account plugged the dress she'd worn, part of the Ivanka Trump Collection. The company's website posted a montage of photos from the convention with links to the white leather satchel that was draped over her arm at one point and to the pumps she was wearing at another. And thus a daughter's love became a huckster's boon. The children of other presidents have readily, even greedily, reaped the fruits of nepotism, but how many have done so while simultaneously suggesting that they're around to provide crucial ballast, performing an invaluable service for the American people?

Maybe her conversations with lawmakers really will yield legislation to lessen the cost of child care and to help working mothers, though it's a long shot. Maybe she'll do some targeted good. I don't doubt that she'd like to. But that's hardly the sum of her motivations, and it almost certainly isn't the essence. Her meticulously groomed Twitter and Instagram accounts give her away. They're exercises in self-affirmation, placing her in a Washington without pores or protests. It looks like she's having the airbrushed adventure of a lifetime. Loading And it smells, yes, like complicity. The New York Times