Clinton to Accept Secretary of State Job Barack Obama, during the Democratic primaries, cited as influential to his thinking the book "Team Of Rivals," about Abraham Lincoln's opponent-stocked cabinet. It would appear this was more than mere campaign puffery: Obama's former presidential rival Hillary Clinton has accepted an offer to join the president-elect's cabinet as Secretary of State, according to a report in Britain's Guardian, and now here on Blasphemes.
Faced with the prospect of Hillary constantly campaigning against him in the Senate - Obama brings her into the fold. Whether this was part of the deal to keep the knife fight out of Denver (where she could have legitimately made a case for a roll call vote and had the Super Delegates get involved to take the nomination) or just a case of keeping the bitch under wraps with an Administration gag order, we'll have to read about 30-40 years from now. Hell, she may even quit three years into it.
Just look at Powell in the Bush Administration. Speak up once - and get frozen out of the Administration and possibly politics forever.
The flaw in the argument is that Obama is Lincoln.
The Team of Rivals note comes from the Doris Kearns Goodwin book on Abraham Lincoln. The premise of the Goodwin book is of Lincoln’s political genius by examining his relationships with three men he selected for his cabinet, all of whom were opponents for the Republican nomination in 1860. All fine and well - but unlike Obama, Lincoln argued on a national level for years about issues such as the Mexican War, tariffs, abolition, Texas annexation, the Wilmot Proviso, economic development in the relatively new nation, and of course Lincoln pretty much founded the Republican Party after the collapse of the Whigs. So, some consolidation was necessary.
When Lincoln ran for President in 1860 he addressed the question of a house divided at the Cooper Union in New York and ran a campaign of important ideas in an increasingly divided nation. In contrast, Obama’s entire campaign was empty, undefined, “change.”
As Lincoln was sworn in as president in March 1861 seven states had already left the Union. The issues of states rights versus a strong central government, agrarian society versus industrial society, new states as slave or free states, and abolition of slavery were all the same argument. The attack by the rebel states on the Union’s Fort Sumter in Charleston on April 12, 1861 began the bloodshed that had been bubbling to the surface since Independence.
The very able Lincoln realized the then much smaller nation needed a unity government and so Lincoln created a unity government - his Team of Rivals. Which, in my opinion, should be viewed as a gathering of a majority, not unlike a multi-party country like Italy or Germany.
Now maybe, just maybe, this is "change" in the sense of people putting aside differences to get something done. IF this is the case, it will take my cynical heart a while to thaw out for the refreshing new car smell. But I smell something different...
I smell a future scapegoat for Obama to pin any failure on. It's insane that Hillary or Bill would fall for this obvious trap. Trap or good will, it doesn't matter which because her fate is now tied to Obama's.
Could have been funnier though. He could have picked John Kerry.
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