The Blog of Larry Tagg

In a 2007 interview, Barack Obama spoke of his admiration for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling book Team of Rivals, saying that if he were allowed just one book for his library, her Abraham Lincoln biography would be his choice. Goodwin’s thesis—that Lincoln crafted a cabinet of rivals that worked together for the good of the nation—has been widely accepted as gospel.

Recently, Obama has cobbled together his own “team of rivals”: Joe Biden (Vice President), Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State), and Bill Richardson (Secretary of Commerce) all ran against him for the Democratic nomination. The mainstream media are quick to use Goodwin’s feel-good theme as historical justification for his actions. Unfortunately, Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” meme makes a terrific phrase, but it is poor history.

Things didn’t work out as well for Lincoln’s cabinet as Goodwin would have us believe. The comfortable notion that Lincoln harmonized the energies and ambitions of his enemies into a unit that triumphed in a national crisis is pure fiction. Lincoln’s cabinet was far from being a “team of rivals.” In fact, it was no team at all.

The men who had competed with Lincoln for the Republican nomination continued to vie with him for control of policy. Several directly and indirectly opposed his exercise of authority as President.

From the first hour, the Secretaries’ common coin was distrust. “Every day affords proof of the absence of any settled policy, or harmonious . . . action, in the administration,” wrote an observer. “Seward, Bates, and Cameron, form one wing, Chase, Welles, and Blair the opposite wing. Smith is on both sides, and Lincoln sometimes on one, sometimes on the other. There has been agreement on nothing.” At cabinet meetings, wrote Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, “There was very little concerted action. There was no recognized leader and the Secretary of State put himself in advance of the President.”

Secretary of State William Seward, Lincoln’s main rival for the nomination, was the first to break, submitting his resignation the week before Lincoln’s inauguration, in a fight over Cabinet posts. (Lincoln refused to accept it: “I can’t afford to let him take the first trick,” he explained to his secretary.) According to Welles, Seward treated Lincoln “with a familiarity that sometimes borders on disrespect,” and indeed, Seward tried to wrest control of the administration from Lincoln during the tense weeks of Fort Sumter crisis.

Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, the most determined of Lincoln’s rivals, was no more of a team player than Seward. Chase precipitated two different cabinet crises in 1862 in an attempt to control policy. He ran against Lincoln for the party nomination in 1864.

Attorney General Edward Bates’ diary drips with disdain for Lincoln. The president “lacks will and purpose,” Bates wrote, “and, I greatly fear he has not the power to command.” He resigned in disgust in 1864.

A friend of Lincoln’s said he heard Secretary of War Edwin Stanton speak to Lincoln “scores of times [with] a withering sneer.” He continued, “There was hardly a period during his remarkable service as a War Minister in which [Stanton] was not, on some more or less important point, in positive antagonism with the President.”

The “team” was so dysfunctional that Lincoln did not even consult with his cabinet on momentous decisions like the Emancipation Proclamation, and he was completely hands-off in his dealings with the various Departments. Chase complained in a “leak” to Lincoln’s enemies that cabinet members had no say on policy, and that under Lincoln’s lax administration they only met “now and then for talk on whatever happens to come uppermost, not for grave consultation on matters concerning the salvation of the country.”

Lincoln’s “team of rivals” was hardly a success—rather than act as a template for modern administrations, it should be a cautionary tale. Lincoln was a political genius, but it was in spite of, not because of, his flawed cabinet strategy.

The fashionable idea that Obama somehow mirrors the Sixteenth President is also mistaken. Fortunately for the country, the newly-elected Barack Obama’s circumstances are nothing like those faced by the newly-elected Lincoln. Lincoln was elected in 1860 with less than 40% of the popular vote, was known largely in the North by his hucksterish campaign image of “The Railsplitter,” and was treated as an illegitimate interloper by the entire South, whose leaders chose to bathe the continent in blood rather than see him preside. Obama, on the other hand, was chosen by 52% of an electorate that has confirmed Obama’s qualifications for office through two years of trial and debate. Unlike Lincoln, Obama’s legitimacy as president-elect is not in dispute.

Goodwin correctly pointed out that, as we debate the “team of rivals” concept Obama seems to have embraced, we are inspecting history, a sign of a healthy political culture. But the idea that Goodwin’s Madison Avenue-style catch phrase reflects in any way what Lincoln experienced with his cabinet is simply not true.

President-elect Obama, there is still time to add more books to your library.