Obama brings foes into fold

WASHINGTON --- Presidents typically say they want to be surrounded by strong-willed people who have the courage to disagree with them. President-elect Barack Obama, reaching out to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans, actually might mean it.

Abraham Lincoln meant it. He appointed his bitter adversaries to crucial posts, choosing as war secretary a man who had called him a "long-armed ape" who "does not know anything and can do you no good."

Richard Nixon didn't mean it.

"I don't want a government of yes-men," he declared. But among all the president's men, those who said no did so at their peril. He went down a path of destruction in the company of sycophants.

It so happens that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton share a reverence for Team of Rivals , Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about how Lincoln brought foes into his fold. Mrs. Clinton listed it during the campaign as the last book she had read; Mr. Obama spoke of it several times.

Now past could be prologue.

Mr. Obama is considering Mrs. Clinton for secretary of state or another senior position, meeting John McCain on Monday to see how his Republican presidential rival might help him in the Senate and sizing up one-time opponents in both parties for potential recruitment.

"By surrounding himself with people who bring different perspectives, he will increase his options, absorb dissenting views and heighten his ability to speak empathetically to people on different sides of each issue," Ms. Goodwin told The Associated Press on Friday. "The challenge, of course, is to ensure that the discussions do not become paralyzing, and that once a decision is made the inner circle accepts that the time for debate is over.

During the bitter primary campaign, Mrs. Clinton dismissed Mr. Obama as a neophyte who could not be trusted to handle crises and who had not done much more in politics than make fancy speeches. Yet she strongly supported Mr. Obama in the general campaign, not unlike William Henry Seward, the Hillary Clinton of his day.

Seward, the front-runner in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination, was so confident that he went on an eight-month tour of Europe a year earlier, only to see Lincoln vanquish him. Lincoln made him secretary of state.

Lincoln also enlisted Democrat Edwin Stanton as his second war secretary, despite being humiliated by Stanton years earlier when they worked together as trial lawyers. Salmon P. Chase, a constant critic of Lincoln and another Republican rival, became his treasury secretary.

Lincoln's reasoning: "We needed the strongest men. These were the very strongest men. I had no right to deprive the country of their services."

None of this has been lost on Mr. Obama, who said in May that Lincoln's inclusion of former foes "has to be the approach that one takes."

Ms. Goodwin says a true team of rivals would be exceptionally difficult to make work in these days of hyperpartisanship, scandal-hungry blogs and raw feelings between parties. Still, she said the even-keeled Mr. Obama displayed a temperament in the campaign that could help him pull it off.

"And I believe the country would respond with great enthusiasm, recognizing the great contrast to recent times," she said.