Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses Lincoln, Obama — and their 'rivals'

[babylonsister]

Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses Lincoln, Obama — and their 'rivals'

By Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Thousands of Americans have bought Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," after hearing that it shaped President-elect Barack Obama's thinking.

"Rivals," which examines how Lincoln put three of his opponents in the 1860 election in his Cabinet, was No. 14 on Amazon.com's bestseller list the Friday before Thanksgiving, no small feat for three-year-old nonfiction. (Obama's "Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father" were No. 10 and 11 on that list, respectively.)

Goodwin spoke by phone with McClatchy recently about her take on Obama and the lessons Lincoln offers him:

Q. Barack Obama called you after reading "Team of Rivals" and you met. What did he ask you, and what did you tell him?

A. It was early in the primary process. He hadn't won any of the primaries yet. My husband (Richard Goodwin, an adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson) and I went down and visited him in his Senate office. It was very relaxed and fun. That was the first time I'd met him.

He just called me on my cell and said, "This is Barack Obama," and told me he'd read the book and how much he admired Lincoln and how much he thought he could learn from Lincoln. He seems to be a man who thinks about history, which is great.

(We talked about) the Progressive era, the New Deal, the 1960s, when it was ripe for leadership to take the country in a new direction. That was something that happened in Lincoln's time. He (Lincoln) worried that his generation didn't have the challenges that the Founding Fathers had, and that all that was left for his generation was modest ambitions.

Of course, that turned out not to be true. We (Goodwin and her husband) both came out of the meeting having the feeling we were in the presence of someone with a really spacious intellect. I think mostly what he (Obama) had absorbed, which is what he's talked about, was that Lincoln was willing to surround himself with who he thought were not necessarily the rivals — that's become a catchword — but the strongest and most able people even if they argued with him.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/56465.html

[fasttense]

1. Ha, ha, I read it 2 years ago.

So does that make me smarter than Obama? Probably not.


Actually it is a very interesting book but very, very heavy. You can't lay in bed and fall asleep reading this one. But you can fall asleep reading in your favorite easy chair.

After reading this book, it boiled my blood when idiot Republicon pseudo intellectuals would compare the bush to Lincoln.