Somewhat coincidentally, I spent this weekend reading two books about presidents. The first was Gore Vidal’s Inventing a Nation, Washington, Adams and Jefferson, a quirky and witty book about our first three presidents. The second was George McGovern’s Abraham Lincoln, which I picked up at the book signing event we went to on Friday. I took Vidal’s book to Washington primarily because it was slim, didn’t take much room in my backpack, and was short enough to read during the train ride. McGovern’s book was also a light read.
These days, the book of the hour is Doris Kearns’ Team of Rivals, which is decidedly not slim. As everyone interested in politics knows, Obama has read the book, and it’s been argued or claimed that he is also interested in having a Team of Rivals around him. The Judd Gregg and Hillary Clinton nominations, and to a lesser extent, the Joe Biden pick, are cited as examples of Obama’s attempt to emulate Lincoln.
It’s worth noting that there are teams and there are teams. Our first President had a Team of Rivals as well. They weren’t necessarily rivals with him (who could be?), but they were rivals with each other and warmly loathed one another. I speak of Jefferson and Hamilton, of course. It’s not clear that the country benefitted from that particular rivalry. Hamilton was effective, but Jefferson was undermined by Hamilton, who colluded with the British and kept that country informed of developments within the government, including, and especially, Jefferson’s state department.
Poor Adams, as Vidal points out, made the mistake of retaining Washington’s cabinet, out of respect for the retiring hero. The problem was that each and every one of them were Hamilton’s men, who took their orders from that master intriguer, and undermined Adams at every turn. Adams did not get rid of them until it was far too late. They were, so to speak, rivals at one remove, or a rival’s puppets. Any way you want to put it, things didn’t work out so well for Adams.
There’s a lesson for Obama in these presidencies, as well as in the Lincoln experiment. Lincoln may have chosen his political rivals, as Obama did with Hillary Clinton, but he didn’t choose his ideological rivals. Most of his cabinet appointees were, after all, fellow members of a newly formed, and therefore reasonably ideologically coherent, political party, the guiding principle of which was a belief that slavery should be confined and not allowed to spread. They all agreed on that and they all agreed that the union should be preserved. Ditto with Lincoln’s Democratic appointees. He didn’t appoint any secessionists, or Buchanan Democrats. He did not, in other words, create a house divided. His choice of his rivals was tactical. In other words, no Judd Greggs.
I’m inclined to think, and agree with Frank Rich, that for the most part, Obama’s bi-partisanship is a public relations exercise that will bear fruit down the road. He is well aware that the team of rivals/bi-partisan approach has its limits. As Rich puts it, “Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.”.
