Defeat Your Opponents. Then Hire Them.
By DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
Published: August 3, 2008
ON the campaign trail, Barack Obama has applauded Abraham Lincoln’s decision to bring his three main rivals for the Republican nomination into his cabinet, suggesting that he might also invite his opponents to join his administration, if it would help create “the best possible government.” Lincoln understood, Mr. Obama said, that personal feelings mattered less than the issue of “How can we get this country through this time of crisis?” John McCain, too, has embraced the idea of moving beyond partisanship: “We belong to different parties,” he has said, “not different countries.”
Certainly, if the next president were to bring former adversaries into his inner circle, in the No. 2 slot or as members of his administration, he would display that rare combination of humility and confidence required to perform wisely at the highest level. But could a president really create a team of rivals today, and would that team actually be able to get anything done? While Lincoln’s model may be more appealing and more needed than ever before, several factors in our current political climate make it considerably more difficult to bring about.
First, our interminable campaigns pit rivals against one another for so many contentious debates, personal attacks and counterattacks, that feelings harden, not only between candidates, but also their staff members, who come to regard opponents as enemies.
To be sure, negative attacks have been a part of our politics from the earliest days, but in Lincoln’s day, and indeed, until the end of the 19th century, those attacks were delivered mainly through the partisan press rather than on television, where distorted words and images are replayed again and again, creating permanent grudges. Back then, it was considered unseemly for presidential candidates to take the stump, much less debate in person. And, of course, their election cycles were far shorter.
Second, our 24-hour news cycle significantly lessens the possibility of containing dissenting opinions within the president’s official circle. Lincoln’s cabinet meetings were fiery affairs. Members openly feuded with one another as well as with the president. Yet this information rarely appeared in the newspapers; we know about it mainly through diaries and letters. We learn from the diary of Attorney General Edward Bates that Montgomery Blair, the conservative postmaster general, castigated William Seward, the moderate secretary of state, as “an unprincipled liar,” and called Edwin Stanton, the radical secretary of war, “a great scoundrel.” Stanton refused for a time to sit in cabinet meetings if Blair was present.
If similar feuds were reported by the nightly news, magnified day after day by the cable shows, dissected by countless political blogs, and made fodder for late-night comedy, a team of rivals would collapse.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03goodwin.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
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