Doris Kearns Goodwin won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2005 book on the subject, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
(which is currently enjoying a surge of popularity - #13 on Amazon. Anyway, Pinsker's point is that the Team didn't work out as well as Goodwin would have you believe. Lincoln passed over many of his friends, who weren't happy, and three out of the four original Rivals were gone within a year. So while Obama may use "Team of Rivals" rhetoric, his cabinet shouldn't follow that model.
On a different note, I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. In some parts of Washington inexperience is a benefit. Foreign policy is not one of them; we don't need new ideas about how to talk to our neighbors.
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During the primary season, Clinton criticized Obama's willingness to communicate with foreign leaders "without preconditions." If Obama appoints Clinton as Secretary of State, she will need to follow his foreign policy orders. Will she be too headstrong to comply? If she does comply, will people perceive her primary attacks as purely political? Perhaps no one will care; the election's outcome may have made that attack a moot point.
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