About the Bullshit Team of Rivals Meme.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read Doris Kearn Goodwin's Team of Rivals, nor do I intend to, simply because I find the whole notion that Lincoln built this team of political opponents and molded them into an effective cabinet to be so laughable on its face that I'm not particularly interested in how Goodwin is going to try to convince me Lincoln's cabinet was particularly effective, when I've read numerous works that convince me otherwise.

Here are a few inconvenient truths that the media needs to figure before continuing to peddle its Team of Rivals bullshit:

1. The Republican Party was formed in 1854, in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, just 6 years before Lincoln was first elected. It was built out of anti-slavery elements of the old Whig Party, which basically collapsed after a fatal split over abolition, and mostly northern, liberal Democrats who opposed slavery. So it would have not been all that shocking to find members of the Republican party who had been Democrats as recently as 6 years before.

2. Lincoln's first cabinet (which is what Obama is picking right now), contained no Democrats at all. While Lincoln did replace a couple of his first cabinet members with War Democrats turned members of the rechristened National Union Party (the banner Republicans ran under in 1864) later, the bullshit that Lincoln appointed tons of Democrats to his cabinet in 18641 is pure fiction.

3. Lincoln's cabinet throughout the war was a very dysfunctional bunch. His clashes with Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (who referred to his boss as the original gorilla, a nickname that General and later Linoln Presidential opponent George McClellan adopted from Stanton) and Salmon P Chase are the stuff of legend. Of his first cabinet, about the only one Lincoln could count on as a true ally was Montgomery Blair, his first postmaster general. It is a measure of Lincoln's gifts as arguably the best pure politician to hold the office prior to FDR that he managed to hold it together at all.

4. What Lincoln's first cabinet did have was a whole lot of Republicans in it who had been rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860. These included Stanton, Seward, and Chase. All three of them went into Lincoln's cabinet convinced they were better suited for Lincoln's role than he was, which led to many of the more famous clashes.

To bring this back to the latter day Obama Cabinet, Obama's cabinet outdoes Goodwin's and particularly the media's Team of Rivals meme. With the announcement of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, assuming Obama's cabinet picks are confirmed, it will contain 4 of the people that ran against Obama for the Democratic Nomination. Unlike Lincoln, Obama's cabinet will contain two Republicans, Marine General Jim Jones as National Security Adviser, and Robert Gates will remain as Secretary of Defense. While true that Jones was an Obama adviser prior to the election, he is still nominally a Republican. Gates' Republican ties are beyond question.

So in effect, Obama out-Team of Rivals Lincoln's Team of Rivalscabinet on points. Will it work as well as Lincoln's? Frankly, for the sake of the country, it had better run better than Lincoln's.

So to sum up, Team of Rivals as a media meme is beyond stupid. It's a lazy construct from our lazy media. I'm sure Goodwin, and particularly her publisher, don't mind all the books the media has sold for her in the last few weeks though.