Campaign donors
How reform can minimize politics in presidential appointments
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This analysis by the editor and co-founder of Current describes methods used elsewhere to reduce the influence of political favor in naming boards. If patronage appointments are giving CPB a mediocre Board of Directors and top management, as retired longtime staffer David Stewart contends in the accompanying commentary, there’s a simple reform that’s widely used in such situations. That is: inserting a nominating step in the process, a reform that brings to bear the attention and efforts of additional interests and reduces the now-predominant role of partisan considerations. That’s how people are named to the board that runs the National Science Foundation. That’s how most regents of the Smithsonian Institution are chosen. On the state level, that’s how the Commonwealth of Kentucky picks the board that oversees Kentucky Educational Television, as well as state university boards.