A "Team of Rivals"...

I'm not entirely sure even Abraham Lincoln himself could live up to the "hype" that the media and the Obamaniacs are making in comparing Barack to "Honest Abe".

More importantly, though... is the comparison fair and accurate? And is it the kind of "team" a modern President would want?

Lincoln, did, indeed, have a Team of Rivals. With only one exception, they did a GREAT job of doing everything Lincoln wanted them to do... either by the forceof Lincoln's will or their own efforts to support him. The important difference here is that Lincoln had the WILL to run the job himself... his cabinet was truly there to advice and counsel, while Abe made the calls.

The next most famous "Team of Rivals" was the Cabinets of FDR, and again, you have a strong-willed CIC running the show (at least till the fourth term, and we begin to see the cracks develop). However, what happens when FDR dies and Truman has to step in? He is forced to ask for the resignations of EACH and EVERY one of them.

Johnson tried it, too... and history remembers his failures far more than his successes. Finally, we have the Nixon Administrations, and his mistake was not in appointing men that rivaled each other, but that rivaled him. The public implosion that was the Watergate White House is the result.

Now, which of these examples most seems to typify the pattern Obama is following? Lincoln? FDR? or Johnson/Nixon?

It is always dangerous to leave old appointees in office, but it might work for him here with Gates. His appointment of Clinton as SoS is scary... she is very unlikely to be the kind of Secretary to double-check with the CIC before making decisions, and that means that we could have a repeat of the Cheney/Rummy syndrome fresh on the heals of the Cheney/Rummy fiasco itself. Hillary is more than capable of putting her foot in her mouth and over-reaching her authority while visiting some foreign capital... say the Kremlin, or Berlin, or Paris, or Beijing.

Is this the best way to create the "UNITY" and "HOPE" we were all promised? Obama wanted a mandate, and while the fact of that mandate is up for some debate, THIS isn't the way to institute the mandate into his Presidency.

He needs sycophants and "yes-men"... not political opponents and rivals... to cement the "public mandate" he so wanted from the election and didn't get.