The first-mover advantage of actually reading Team of Rivals

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 5:44 PM Share

Matt Yglesias posts the following query:

So has anyone actually read [Team of Rivals]? I think it’s a book I’ve been known to pretend to read in the past. In general, I’d be more comfortable with a president drawing lessons from serious historical scholarship rather than these kind of pop histories they sell in airports.

As it happens, I've read Team of Rivals from cover to cover, and even recommended it to the presidential candidates months before it was hip to do so. Here's what I wrote then:

The idea of highlighting Lincoln’s greatness by examining how he treated both his political rivals (William Seward, Salmon Chase, Edwin Stanton, and Edward Bates) and his generals (McClellan, Grant, Meade) is ingenious. Goodwin suggests two sources of Lincoln’s greatness: his ego, which allowed him to tolerate with grace the machinations of his cabinet, and his political acumen, which allowed him to move on the slavery issue in such a way that he led the country without overreaching and antagonizing public opinion in the Union. This latter, populist skill is usually looked at askance in political commentary, so it was facinating to see a great man use it to good purposes.

How does the Team of Rivals analogy apply here? Well, Obama certainly has a healthy ego, and based on his behavior to date, seems perfectly comfortable being the calm at the center of the storm. That said, I think there are two important differences at work here: 1. Lincoln's team of rivals consisted of politicians who actively pursued the Presidency, and thought themselves the political superior of Lincoln. I'm not sure how well that applies here beyond Hillary Clinton. For example, this FT story by Demetri Sevastopulo suggests that keeping on Bob Gates as SecDef mirrors, "the approach of Abraham Lincoln who appointed former rivals to his cabinet in 1861." But Gates has never run for the presidency, or expressed any desire to do so. Neither has Larry Summers, Tom Daschle, Eric Holder, or other rumored cabinet names (maybe John Kerry or Bill Richardson, but he would simply be displacing Clinton). In other words, Obama's cabinet will likely contain a lot of smart, strong-willed individuals, but not necessarily more presidential aspirants than Lincoln. In other words, it would look an awful lot like... George W. Bush's first cabinet. 2. The bigger difference is that the federal government during the 1860s really was a cabinet government -- Lincoln had just a handful of staffers like John Hay - and no one like Rahm Emanuel. In contrast, as Marc Ambinder has repeatedly pointed out, Obama seems to be much more focused on staffing the White House than his cabinet. So in contrast to Lincoln, Obama has more than his personal political skills at his disposal to manage his cabinet departments. That said, it's pretty smart for Obama and his staff to spread this meme around. First, it flatters all of his cabinet officers to think that they're like Seward, Salmon Chase et al. Second, by invoking the metaphor, Obama gets to frame his administration as evoking both the great challenges of the Civil War period and the greatness of Lincoln.

EXPLORE:POLITICS, FOREIGN POLICY COMMUNITY, HISTORICAL ANALOGIES, OBAMA, TEAM OF RIVALS

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ZATHRAS

6:44 PM ET

November 19, 2008

Well, it's pretty smart

Well, it's pretty smart unless Obama thinks of himself as Abraham Lincoln. Lots of administrations have included rivals, beginning with George Washington's. Usually the results have been unfortunate; they have included the preoccupation of the President with managing the rivalry, or rivalries, within his own administration, becoming a party to one or more of the rivalries on his team, letting rivalries mature into bureaucratic stalemate, or resolving rivalries de facto but not de jure. The most extreme example of the last was Nixon's leaving in place a Secretary of State for his entire first term while he ran foreign policy through the Security Adviser's office.

Lincoln's situation was sui generis. A minority President, nominated by his party because better known aspirants were unacceptable to important factions and facing a nation on the verge of dissolution, Lincoln had no choice but to assign major responsibilities to men who thought much less of him as President than they thought of themselves. His skill at bring the country through the titantic struggle after 1861 was testament to his genius and practical skill. It is not a model for other Presidents lacking Lincoln's qualities and facing problems very different than the stark crisis he did.

Obama's situation involves an additional qualification. He has advanced his career in Campaign World, aided by people with specific specialized skills. In Campaign World, incidentally, Hillary Clinton is a colossus. The rules of Campaign World tend to work badly in Real World, the world of government, and people who have lived in Campaign World for long periods of time are not obvious choices for major Real World responsibilities, for example those of the Secretary of State. Lincoln's example offers no guidance as to how to proceed against this problem.

SLEEPYIRV

9:55 PM ET

November 19, 2008

It's extremely embarassing

It's extremely embarassing that Yglesias wrote that- it's one thing to be ignorant, it's another to be proud of that ignorance.

HENRY

2:15 AM ET

November 20, 2008

To quote: First, it

To quote:

First, it flatters all of his cabinet officers to think that they’re like Seward, Salmon Chase et al.

Just who is it who is active in politics today and who looks in the mirror and sees Salmon Chase—and why is he still walking about free and unmedicated?

Picturing yourself as a major party figure who plotted against his President from within the Cabinet, only to be outmaneuvered and shown up as a weakling? Maybe John Kerry would appreciate the comparison, although I don't think he has the gumption to enter into any such plot in the first place. I can't think of another one who would accept the role.

[Sarah Palin might accept the first part of that description--the part about backstabbing--but I doubt she'd like the second. Assuming, of course, that she knows that Salmon Chase is not a sporting event.]

PD SHAW

4:24 PM ET

November 20, 2008

I've not read Team of Rivals,

I've not read Team of Rivals, but generally read 1-2 books about Lincoln each year by scholars of Lincoln or his era.

The notion that Lincoln's cabinet should be a model of anything strikes me as bizarre given the infighting and various attempts to undermine Lincoln or other cabinet members. It's one thing to say Lincoln handled a difficult situation well (like say the Civil War), but it's quite another to advocate the creation of that difficult situation.

In fact, the reason Dan seems to like the book has less to do with cabinets as it does working with politicians and bureacrats with massive egos. That will be an issue regardless of his choice for cabinet.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS » THE STRATEGIC PRESIDENCY

5:50 PM ET

November 26, 2008

[...] scan-read of Team of

[...] scan-read of Team of Rivals à la a person preparing for a college final. And I have to say that, like Daniel Drezner and most others I’ve spoken to, what Obama’s doing doesn’t actually seem to [...]