Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Viral "rivals"

"Team of rivals" is starting to, er, rival "throw under the bus" as the campaign cliche of the year. Andrew Sullivan is now dreaming of an Obama cabinet containing two Clintons, one Gore, and one Edwards (why not two?)

Okay, Doris Kearns Goodwin is a very good writer, and Lincoln's cabinet had some strong personalities, but this notion of herding giants or coopting adversaries is really becoming a fetish -- maybe another wished-for antidote to Bush's coalition of the shilling.

Rivalry in a cabinet is not in itself a good. It may be a necessary byproduct of bringing the best people together. And competition of ideas is good. But there's no intrinsic benefit to throwing as many scorpions in a bottle as possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment