Team of rival theories

Good to see that not everyone is not smitten with the oft-repeated idea that Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” epitomized his political genius — and should be a model for President-elect Obama to similarly bring Hillary Clinton his former rivals into his Cabinet.  Team of Rivals may indeed be a good book (I too have not actually read it, though I recall seeing it sitting around the house a while back), but this doesn’t change the fact that the analogy also just may not fit.  And the very pervasiveness of the comparison, the ease with which lazy journalists invoke the term, seems itself a reason to distrust its aptness.  Particularly when historians take it apart and find that the lofty phrase didn’t even really apply to Lincoln.  Here’s Dickinson’s Matthew Pinsker in the LAT:

Over the years, it has become easy to forget that hard edge and the once bad times that nearly destroyed a president. Lincoln’s Cabinet was no team. His rivals proved to be uneven as subordinates. Some were capable despite their personal disloyalty, yet others were simply disastrous.

And CUNY’s James Oakes concludes, in the NYT:

There is little doubt that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. But not much of what made him great can be discerned in his appointment of a contentious, envious and often dysfunctional collection of prima donnas to his cabinet.

A note to Barack, though: if you do decide to take advantage of Professor Oakes’ historical insight, I’d at least avoid calling Hillary a “prima donna.”

(image from flickr user urbaneapartments under a Creative Commons license)

L’indépendence above party?

Monitoring Quebec’s elections (as I’m sure all election-obsessed Americans are), Marc Desnoyers at RealClearWorld suggests that, despite the declining popularity of the province’s separatist party, it’s not necessarily that the Québecois don’t want to separate from Canada; it’s just that they’re fed up with the party that wants to do so.

Sailing away from Canada?

(photo from flickr user Seb* [aka *] under a Creative Commons license)

Step away slowly, Jimmy

Three members of an organization known — somewhat cryptically, I admit — as “The Elders” were rebuffed in their attempt to make a peaceful visit to Zimbabwe.  The three troublemakers?  Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela’s wife Graça Machel, and intimidating former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

The Herald [Robert Mugabe's newspaper] quoted the same source as saying that some of the three Elders were “deemed hostile to Zimbabwe,” accusing Mr. Annan of being “openly critical of President Mugabe and his administration” in the past.

From one octogenarian to another, who’s really being “hostile” here, Mr. Mugabe?

(photo from flickr user Valerie Reneé under a Creative Commons license)

Please stop fighting now, please

If only it were this easy.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on rebels in Darfur and Sudan’s government to refrain from attacking each other after reports of fighting.

Something tells me that’s not the first time Mr. Ban has made this request.

He is can talk big full sentences

Andy Borowitz has found a problem that Barack Obama may not be able to get over.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.

“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon.  “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.”

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, “Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate – we get it, stop showing off.”

Once he threw in a past participle and — no, say it ain’t so — a gerundial phrase, I knew I’d had enough.