Rivals

Imagine if President-elect Donald Trump had asked John Kasich to be his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of Treasury, Jeb Bush to be his Secretary of Navy, Chris Christie to be his Attorney General, and Ted Cruz to be his Secretary of War.  All of these men were his political rivals during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries - at times he threw both political criticism and personal insults their way (as is his way, he picked out childish nicknames for each one, "Lying Ted", "Low Energy Jeb", and "Little Marco" - there's even a Wikipedia site of all the nicknames he has used for both colleagues and rivals here).  Trump is one individual who needs his ego stroked as often as possible, so he would never do it.


It's not always a great idea to build the team that is supposed to support you and assist you in executing your vision with individuals who've been your political opponents.  But that is exactly what President Abraham Lincoln, arguably our nation's greatest President, did shortly after he was elected President of the United States in 1860.  Nearly all of the individuals that President Lincoln asked to serve in his cabinet were political rivals, many of whom he had defeated at the 1860 Republican National Convention.


Senator William Seward of New York had been the frontrunner up until the time that the nominating convention was held, although Lincoln, Governor Salmon Chase of Ohio, former Representative Edward Bates of Missouri, and Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania had strong support from a large number of delegates to the convention too.  There were no primaries back then, so the nominating conventions were really where all the action occurred.  Senator Seward led after the first ballot, but he didn't have enough votes to have a majority, which was required to win the nomination.  Lincoln was a very close second.  Senator Cameron's delegates shifted over to Lincoln on the second ballot, resulting in a tie between Seward and Lincoln.  Finally, on the third ballot, Lincoln secured the nomination by winning a majority of the delegates' votes.


Once Lincoln took office in 1861, he appointed four of his opponents (Seward, Chase, Bates, and Cameron) to his cabinet.  William Seward became his Secretary of State.  Salmon Chase became the Secretary of Treasury.  Simon Cameron became the Secretary of War, and Edward Bates became the Attorney General.  What Lincoln did was unprecedented - not since the early days in the history of the United States, when the Vice President was the individual who got second place in the Presidential election, had something like this occurred.  And we will probably never see something like this ever again.


What Lincoln did was even more impressive when you consider the political times.  The country was divided over the issue of slavery, and the crisis had built up over many, many years to the point where the 1860 election really was the moment that the proverbial powder keg blew.  During a crisis, a leader generally prefers to have a team of individuals who he or she can trust and lean on for support.  Lincoln chose the opposite course, and that is the subject of the book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by the Pullitzer Prize-winning author, Doris Kearns Goodwin.


Here is what Larry Sabato had to say about the book in his review:


When he became president in 1861, Lincoln had few strong allies in Washington; he was mainly a stranger to the ways of this most political of cities, and he faced the dissolution of the Union in a matter of weeks. Even more than most chief executives, he needed all the help he could get. So Lincoln made a strategic decision to include his major Republican party rivals in his Cabinet: Salmon P. Chase as secretary of the treasury, William H. Seward as secretary of state, Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war and Edward Bates as attorney general. Chase, Seward and Bates had been competitors for the GOP presidential nomination, and all of them, especially Chase and Seward, had a shockingly low regard for Lincoln’s abilities and promise. In short, this was not a Cabinet made in compatibility heaven.


As Sabato suggests later in his review, Lincoln applied the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" when he selected his cabinet.  And, as history would attest, Lincoln's gamble worked.  As he writes further:


As ambitious men almost always do, Chase, Seward, Stanton and Bates were easily induced to accept their high-status posts, and they wanted to keep them, which meant that they could only go so far in opposing the president’s policies. In fact, for the most part the four Cabinet members raised remarkably few strong objections even in private discussions with the president, while fulminating from time to time about Lincoln’s alleged high-handedness. More significant, Lincoln gradually won over Seward, Stanton and Bates as they came to appreciate the homespun leader’s keen intellect and skillful sense of politics. Lincoln was not at all what they had once thought.


"Team of Rivals" is really an incredible book - it's become one of my favorite books about personally my favorite President.  Steven Spielberg directed and produced the 2012 film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as President Lincoln (he won his third Academy Award for his performance), based loosely on the book.  The movie is superb, but don't think that you can truly get the gist of the book by watching the movie in this case.  Read the book!