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Team of Rivals
Asked why he had retained controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, President Lyndon Johnson famously said it was probably better "to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
A century earlier, for similar reasons, Abraham Lincoln surprisingly chose his chief rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination for the top positions in his administration. This experiment was explained in detail in a book called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book has become a sensation now as it has been cited as the most influential book by Barrack Obama & Hillary Clinton. This concept, first practiced by Abraham Lincoln, is now being tried valiantly by Obama as he tries to fill his top cabinet positions with people that called him names, actively worked against him, have ideologies that are really different etc.
The article below is about the same topic, the real dangers of surrounding oneself only with likeminded people & the critical ability to put aside past grudges for the sake of the country in times of need - very interesting!
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Defeat Your Opponents. Then Hire Them.
By DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
Concord, Mass.
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.
Third, party lines are now so rigidly drawn that if a sitting Republican or Democratic senator were to accept a top post in the opposite party’s cabinet, he would be viewed with grave suspicion by members of both parties. It wasn’t always this way. Once, politicians in Washington of both parties routinely gathered together on weekends for relaxing nights of poker, drinking and conversation. Today such friendships are less common given the need for constant fund-raising, the convenience of flights home and the numerous distractions of modern life. Four decades ago, when Lyndon Johnson needed to break a filibuster and bring the historic Civil Rights Bill to the Senate floor, he reached out to the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen, knowing he could rely on their personal relationship, built over years of companionship in the Senate.
Yet, while these factors make it more difficult to construct a 21st-century team of rivals, the scale of the challenges faced by the next president makes such a diverse inner circle all the more necessary. When Lincoln was asked why he had chosen a cabinet made up of rivals and opponents, his answer was simple. The country was in peril. “We needed the strongest men,” he said. “These were the very strongest men. I had no right to deprive the country of their services.”
In selecting Stanton as his secretary of war, Lincoln revealed a critical ability to put aside past grudges. He and Stanton had first met when they worked together on a trial in Cincinnati in the 1850s. At first sight of the ungainly Lincoln, with his disheveled hair and ill-fitting clothes, Stanton dubbed him a “long-armed ape” and remarked that “he does not know anything and can do you no good.” For the rest of the trial, Stanton ignored Lincoln and refused even to open the brief his colleague Lincoln had painstakingly prepared. Lincoln was humiliated.
Yet, six years later, as president, he determined that Stanton’s bluntness and single-minded intensity were precisely the qualities needed to galvanize the War Department.
Similarly, Lincoln refused to fire Salmon Chase, whose open criticisms of the president never ceased, for he believed that Chase was the best man to run the Treasury. “We have stood together in the time of trial,” he later told friends who could not understand his forbearance, “and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office.”
By building dissent into his inner circle, a president is also more likely to question his own assumptions and to weigh various consequences, leading ultimately to more farsighted decisions.
The story of the Emancipation Proclamation is a case in point. In the months before Lincoln issued his historic proclamation, he listened intently to the arguments within his cabinet over what to do about slavery. The more radical members wanted Lincoln to move quickly. The conservative members feared that emancipation would “intensify the struggle” with the Confederacy, that the border states would no longer support the Union, that it would cause such an outcry in the North that the Republicans would lose the midterm elections.
Lincoln bided his time, realizing that any assault on slavery would have to await a change in public attitudes. Gradually, he began to see a shift in newspaper editorials, in conversations throughout the North and, most tellingly, in the opinions of his cabinet colleagues, even those who represented the more conservative point of view.
Although he knew that opposition would still be fierce, he came to believe it was no longer “strong enough to defeat the purpose.” He told his cabinet that the time for debate was over, and emancipation was declared in 1863. “It is my conviction,” Lincoln later said, “that, had the proclamation been issued even six months earlier than it was, public sentiment would not have sustained it.” Because of the heated discussions within his cabinet, his timing was perfect.
Nor is Lincoln alone in reaching out to his rivals. In 1940, after much of Europe had fallen to Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt decided that the time had come for a coalition cabinet.
For secretary of war, he selected a Republican conservative, Henry Stimson, who had held top posts under previous Republican presidents. He chose as Navy secretary Frank Knox, who had been Alf Landon’s running mate on the Republican ticket in 1936. Both men were unsparing critics of the New Deal, but their domestic views were far less important to the president than their willingness to stand against the isolationist tendencies of their party and aid the Allies against Hitler.
There is also the story of a meeting in Roosevelt’s office during which the president advanced a pet proposal. Everyone nodded in approval except a junior brigadier general, George Marshall. “Don’t you think so, George?” the president asked. Marshall replied: “I am sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with you at all.” The president looked stunned, and Marshall’s friends predicted that his tour in Washington would soon come to an end. A few months later, reaching down 34 names on the list of senior generals, the president asked Marshall to be chief of staff of the United States Army.
Inviting such in-house dissent may indeed pose greater challenges today than in earlier times, but it’s hard to see that we have any other choice. Polls show that Americans wish to move beyond the combination of extreme partisanship and ideological rigidity that has for decades prevented Washington from addressing the serious problems facing our country. They have seen the damage caused by the creation of like-minded “echo chambers” in Washington. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would do well to keep this in mind as they choose their vice president and cabinet members.
History, after all, reveals how dangerous it can be for a president to surround himself with like-minded people. Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, deliberately chose men for his cabinet who thought as he did and, with the agreement of those around him, did nothing to prevent the secession of the Confederate states. He is now considered among the worst of our presidents.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author, most recently, of “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.”
The article below is about the same topic, the real dangers of surrounding oneself only with likeminded people & the critical ability to put aside past grudges for the sake of the country in times of need - very interesting!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Defeat Your Opponents. Then Hire Them.
By DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
Concord, Mass.
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.
Third, party lines are now so rigidly drawn that if a sitting Republican or Democratic senator were to accept a top post in the opposite party’s cabinet, he would be viewed with grave suspicion by members of both parties. It wasn’t always this way. Once, politicians in Washington of both parties routinely gathered together on weekends for relaxing nights of poker, drinking and conversation. Today such friendships are less common given the need for constant fund-raising, the convenience of flights home and the numerous distractions of modern life. Four decades ago, when Lyndon Johnson needed to break a filibuster and bring the historic Civil Rights Bill to the Senate floor, he reached out to the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen, knowing he could rely on their personal relationship, built over years of companionship in the Senate.
Yet, while these factors make it more difficult to construct a 21st-century team of rivals, the scale of the challenges faced by the next president makes such a diverse inner circle all the more necessary. When Lincoln was asked why he had chosen a cabinet made up of rivals and opponents, his answer was simple. The country was in peril. “We needed the strongest men,” he said. “These were the very strongest men. I had no right to deprive the country of their services.”
In selecting Stanton as his secretary of war, Lincoln revealed a critical ability to put aside past grudges. He and Stanton had first met when they worked together on a trial in Cincinnati in the 1850s. At first sight of the ungainly Lincoln, with his disheveled hair and ill-fitting clothes, Stanton dubbed him a “long-armed ape” and remarked that “he does not know anything and can do you no good.” For the rest of the trial, Stanton ignored Lincoln and refused even to open the brief his colleague Lincoln had painstakingly prepared. Lincoln was humiliated.
Yet, six years later, as president, he determined that Stanton’s bluntness and single-minded intensity were precisely the qualities needed to galvanize the War Department.
Similarly, Lincoln refused to fire Salmon Chase, whose open criticisms of the president never ceased, for he believed that Chase was the best man to run the Treasury. “We have stood together in the time of trial,” he later told friends who could not understand his forbearance, “and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office.”
By building dissent into his inner circle, a president is also more likely to question his own assumptions and to weigh various consequences, leading ultimately to more farsighted decisions.
The story of the Emancipation Proclamation is a case in point. In the months before Lincoln issued his historic proclamation, he listened intently to the arguments within his cabinet over what to do about slavery. The more radical members wanted Lincoln to move quickly. The conservative members feared that emancipation would “intensify the struggle” with the Confederacy, that the border states would no longer support the Union, that it would cause such an outcry in the North that the Republicans would lose the midterm elections.
Lincoln bided his time, realizing that any assault on slavery would have to await a change in public attitudes. Gradually, he began to see a shift in newspaper editorials, in conversations throughout the North and, most tellingly, in the opinions of his cabinet colleagues, even those who represented the more conservative point of view.
Although he knew that opposition would still be fierce, he came to believe it was no longer “strong enough to defeat the purpose.” He told his cabinet that the time for debate was over, and emancipation was declared in 1863. “It is my conviction,” Lincoln later said, “that, had the proclamation been issued even six months earlier than it was, public sentiment would not have sustained it.” Because of the heated discussions within his cabinet, his timing was perfect.
Nor is Lincoln alone in reaching out to his rivals. In 1940, after much of Europe had fallen to Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt decided that the time had come for a coalition cabinet.
For secretary of war, he selected a Republican conservative, Henry Stimson, who had held top posts under previous Republican presidents. He chose as Navy secretary Frank Knox, who had been Alf Landon’s running mate on the Republican ticket in 1936. Both men were unsparing critics of the New Deal, but their domestic views were far less important to the president than their willingness to stand against the isolationist tendencies of their party and aid the Allies against Hitler.
There is also the story of a meeting in Roosevelt’s office during which the president advanced a pet proposal. Everyone nodded in approval except a junior brigadier general, George Marshall. “Don’t you think so, George?” the president asked. Marshall replied: “I am sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with you at all.” The president looked stunned, and Marshall’s friends predicted that his tour in Washington would soon come to an end. A few months later, reaching down 34 names on the list of senior generals, the president asked Marshall to be chief of staff of the United States Army.
Inviting such in-house dissent may indeed pose greater challenges today than in earlier times, but it’s hard to see that we have any other choice. Polls show that Americans wish to move beyond the combination of extreme partisanship and ideological rigidity that has for decades prevented Washington from addressing the serious problems facing our country. They have seen the damage caused by the creation of like-minded “echo chambers” in Washington. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would do well to keep this in mind as they choose their vice president and cabinet members.
History, after all, reveals how dangerous it can be for a president to surround himself with like-minded people. Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, deliberately chose men for his cabinet who thought as he did and, with the agreement of those around him, did nothing to prevent the secession of the Confederate states. He is now considered among the worst of our presidents.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author, most recently, of “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.”
