ferent formats on different forms from the White House and the Senate, as it is now. It seems reasonable that staff cooperation could produce a basic questionnaire to which both sides could append their own questions.
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Delay in nominations seems to rest with the White House more than with the Senate. While the growth in political jobs and increasingly tight ethics requirements since the Watergate era have been, to a large degree, responsible for this, the White House has been increasingly slow in choosing candidates and inordinately sluggish in the simple act of transmitting nomination papers to the Senate. This should be addressed and remedied in the PPO, supported by increased presidential attention.
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While past excesses discourage any suggestion that ethics laws be loosened at this time, it appears that the financial disclosure laws and conflict of interest requirements are in need of revision to the extent that they keep otherwise qualified candidates from public political service. Likewise, postservice job restrictions should be analyzed to ensure that, in a frenzied public display of political morality, they do not excessively hinder recruitment or shorten tenure by encouraging early departure.
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Bush maintained Reagan's antiregulatory stance, appointing likeminded people to the IRCs and agencies and strengthening the vice president's Council on Competitiveness, which, on its own authority, could overrule agency regulations of any sort if it deemed them harmful to capitalism or the market. He also extended Reagan's litmus test on abortion, most publicly in his appointments to the federal bench and the Supreme Court, but later in his term to many of his other PAS appointments, as well. This political criterion clearly limited the president's options.
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George Bush appears to have at least cracked the conventional wisdom that posits political appointees as hacks, unqualified, agenda-driven ideologues who are more concerned with their own advancement than with the efficient and effective administration of their agency. However, because he stood so long in the shadow of Ronald Reagan and because so many of the key players were the same over both administrations, it is difficult to assess the width or depth of that crack. Nevertheless, the twelve years the Republicans held the White House meant that very often, even if appointees moved, they moved within government, not out of it, or if they did move out, they did not go very far and returned relatively quickly. Indeed, the fact that as many as 50 percent of the Bush people originally served Reagan's administration indicated that they received on-the-job training and so, often being their own predecessors, were more prepared and qualified by the time they served in Bush's. Although their experience in managing budgets and personnel was very limited, perhaps,
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