January 6, 2009
If you’ve been following the news this week, the chinks in the post-Obama Democratic Party’s armor are already showing. First, Roland Burris the Chicago pol appointed by tainted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama’s Senate seat, showed up in Washington to face blustery threats from…his fellow Democrats. It seems that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t want to seat Burris. Earth to Harry: It’s not your call. I’ll do a separate post on that tomorrow, along with answering a question from one of this blog’s readers about Al Franken. Meanwhile, Obama’s choice for Secretary of Commerce, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, has been forced aside by an investigation into whether his administration steered state contracts to firms that contributed money to Richardson and his causes. These are not the kinds of matters Democrats wanted to be talking about two weeks before Obama’s inauguration. But they are talking about them. The question is why.
One reason is that Obama comes out of Illinois politics, which turns out to be a cesspool. It makes New Jersey look clean. If Blagojevich is ultimately convicted, four of the last eight Illinois governors will have gone to prison. Obama rose above this corrupt culture, and should be credited for it, but he can’t help getting some mud spattered on his pant legs in the process: after all, Blagojevich’s impending criminal indictment will apparently charge the governor with, among other things, plotting to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder. Tom Edsall, an astute and veteran political writer points out today on The Huffington Post that Obama’s incoming administration has been touched by “Blago blight” in another way as well: It was the “pay-to-play” ethic revealed on the Blagojevich FBI tapes that made it untenable for the President-elect to see Richardson’s appointment through to confirmation. [Edsall’s piece is here.]
I have a separate question: What was a recycled warhorse like Richardson doing in the Obama cabinet in the first place? For that matter, why was Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed to be Secretary of State? (And what would John Edwards have gotten had he not run afoul of the tabloids—the Justice Department?) The answer to that question was provided last May by Obama himself: He was inspired by Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book about Lincoln’s cabinet. Loose Cannon has been surprised how easily Goodwin shrugged off the plagiarism revelations that tarnished some of her earlier work, but it is the season of forgiveness, and I’m all about redemption. So good for her. But what is so special about Team of Rivals anyway? Its thesis, as Obama himself relayed in that May interview with ABC News, was that “Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because, whatever, you know, personal feelings there were, the issue was, ‘How can we get this country through this time of crisis?’”
It’s a noble instinct, but hardly original to Lincoln. Most of us with an interest in the institution of the presidency typically credit the idea of uniting the country by bringing competing egos and disparate factions into an administration to the first president of the United States. George Washington’s cabinet included Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, with Vice President John Adams stewing in the wings. Talk about rivals! I imagine that Bill Richardson wishes someone had given Obama a more nuanced set of Lincoln books. President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, was published last year. It was written by the incomparable William Lee Miller. Come to think of it, the book that really applies is Bill Miller’s first book on Lincoln: Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography. It’s about Lincoln’s character, which is what really set Abraham Lincoln apart, not the makeup of his cabinet.
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Roland Burris and Al Franken
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Is This Any Way to Choose Senators?
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