Making amateur government work:

...At the urging of the Business Roundtable, the National Academy of Public Administration over the past two years talked with dozens of presidential aides and appointees from the Truman to the Reagan administration to learn from their experience...

...Once nominees agree to brave the confirmation process, White House practice until now has been to leave them adrift to navigate the system...

...J. JACKSON WALTER, director of the Office of Government Ethics in both the Carter and Reagan administrations, is president of the National Academy of Public Administration in Washington, D.C...

...In the same area, have Americans really become so suspicious of one another that three separate investigations (by the FBI, the White House, and Senate Committee) are necessary before a nominee can be declared honest...

...Typically, once they have gained some experience, the outgoing president returns with his entire cabinet to their various, unrelated private lives...

...However, if we are to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the oval office, we must accept that current methods used to select the president's team are far from perfect-but correctable...

...At present, if a nominee must relocate to Washington, he or she must pay for the move, usually after accepting a substantial pay-cut from their private sector job and discovering the high cost of a home in the nation's Capital...

...Moreover, appointees who have stock portfolios and related financial holdings find conflict-of-interest requirements confusing...

...No one suggests eliminating relevant inquiry...

...There are psychic rewards to serving the American public, and certainly working for the president of the United States is an honor and a privilege worth the sacrifice of some time and income...

...and one of the authors of America's Unelected Government: Appointing the President's Team...

...it's the obtuse and superfluous probing into private lives that turns off even the most bone-clean candidates...

...The results produce much the same, narrow field of old boy choices for the three thousand policy positions that affect all our lives...

...By contrast, nations with parliamentary traditions possess the advantage of shadow governments-a complete set of able ministers-in-waiting, ready to step into cabinet posts when their party next gains a majority...

...In the United States, however, our presidential winner starts from scratch, waiting until he has won to choose the three thousand top men and women in his government...

...Once installed, the new team players at the top, though typically successful in private life, too often prove to be innocents in the ways of Washington...

...A certain degree of BOGSAT is inevitable...

...They typically serve in Parliament and are prepared to enter high administrative office by both knowledge and experience...

...Experience has proven that investments and life savings do not have to be jeopardized by public service...

...The government should also pay moving expenses...

...Without changing the way we govern ourselves, there is a better way to ensure professionalism at the top in Washington...

...A helping hand should be offered...

...A president should surround himself with compatible aides, including those with distinguished service in previous administrations...

...They confirm that for want of a better system our top appointees are now chosen by BOGSAT (a Bunch of Guys Sitting Around a Table...

...This protracted exercise is completed only after he has been in the White House for months...

...not a very comforting thought, even to a seasoned bureaucrat...

...From a cost factor alone, these multiple investigations have gotten out of hand...

...Let's give him the best possible aides to accomplish that job...

...But the stakes have become far too high to rely solely upon camaraderie and party ties...

...Here again, accurate information and good counsel from the White House will cure the problem...

...The president's job is already tough enough...

...The mere idea of facing a legislative "firing squad" in confirmation hearings has turned many a talented private citizen away from even considering a position in government...

...For over two hundred years it has been the American Way to transform haberdashers, generals, farmers, and actors into presidents, then expect them to entice successful men and women from private life to Washington to fill positions of vast responsibility for modest pay, long hours, harsh public scrutiny and nonexistent job security...

...Times haven't changed much from JFK's BOGSAT to President Reagan's "kitchen cabinet...

...The triple intrusion upon a candidate's friends, relatives, and employers is, at best, discouraging...

...In addition, there's much work to be done to improve the climate of presidential recruitment, starting with the elimination of obvious obstacles to prospective appointees...

...Predictably, the results have been less than ideal...

...The term was coined by Dan Fenn, upon surveying the methods being used when he was personnel assistant to John F. Kennedy...

...that's how politics has always operated and, to an extent, informal caucusing is the life's breath of our political system...

...Moreover, they are largely strangers to each other and even to the president...

...As a nation we fail to attract our most capable citizens to the top jobs in government...

...All too frequently a political party uses every resource available to put its candidate into the oval office but subsequently fails to provide the winner with a list of the best possible administrators from its own ranks and the private sector...

...No blue chip company would consider treating top talent with such indifference...

...Even before the IOUs, favors, and rewards have been satisfied, the political parties should provide their nominees with an up-to-date data bank filled with the names of other capable, experienced citizens...