Joe Biden just said at his Springfield introduction:
It’s great to be here on the steps of the old statehouse in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place then stand firm. Today in Springfield I know my feet are in the right place.
It’s said that Biden and Obama are not personally close. This week Fresh Air replayed a 2005 interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin in which they discussed her book, Team of Rivals. In it, Kearns writes:
“In my own effort to illuminate the character and career of Abraham Lincoln, I have coupled the account of his life with the stories of the remarkable men who were his rivals for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination: New York Senator William H. Seward, Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase and Missouri’s distinguished elder statesman Edward Bates.” Lincoln appointed Seward secretary of state; Chase secretary of the Treasury; and Bates attorney general.
On how Lincoln turned rivals into allies:
I think Lincoln had an internal confidence that even though these men thought they should have been president, similarly Chase of Ohio thought he should have been president; Bates of Missouri, an elder statesman; Stanton, who eventually becomes secretary of war, had humiliated Lincoln once when they were young lawyers together. But he was able to put those past rivalries beside him, knowing that if these guys do a good job, then it will only be down to the interests of the country and obviously to his own interest as well. And it meant that he had to have, much more than they realized, a sense, `I think I can handle these guys. I can master them.’ […]
So what he essentially did is what a great politician does, which is to understand that human relationships are at the core of political success. And he somehow managed these people, who, as I say, oftentimes hated one another, wouldn’t even go into the same room with each other after a while. Stanton and Blair, his postmaster general and his secretary of war, said such terrible things about each other that Blair would never even go to the War Department, even though he wanted to find out what was going on in the battles.
It’s almost unimaginable that he was able to keep this group together, but the success in keeping it together meant they also represented very different spectrums of political opinion, from very conservative to moderate to radical. And as long as he could keep that coalition together by keeping these people inside the tent, he was actually keeping those strands in the country together as well.
Can Obama do it?