Team of Rivals: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Reviewed.

This was a book I was simultaneously attracted and repelled by the very idea of. It is, to a significant extent, a book about the American Civil War – and to that extent I was excited to read it. It is also a book that appears on a great many reading lists attached to leadership and management training seminars – and to that extent I long abjured it.

Famously, Spielberg bought the film rights to this book before it was even completed – and Goodwin sent him chapters as and when they were completed. Spielberg’s Lincoln is not a filmed version of this book but it’s fair to say that the judgements and characterisations are drawn from Goodwin. Lincoln’s longest joke in Spielberg’s movie appears in this book.

Even more famously, Barack Obama read this book, admired it, and subsequently elevated his principle “rival” – Hillary Clinton to the office of Secretary of State in much the same way Lincoln did with William Seward.

The book claims to tell four stories simultaneously. Seward and Chase are rivals who are more advanced on an anti-slavery spectrum than Lincoln (at least in the 1850s). Bates is more conservative than Lincoln. Equitable treatment of these four figures does not survive as a structuring principle within this book however. Lincoln is just more interesting than the others. He really is. Furthermore, once we shift to a discussion of Lincoln’s actual cabinet, then it’s clear that Edwin Stanton has at least the same claims on our attention.

Nor does the book continue the careers of these people after Lincoln’s death. Stanton and Seward in particular remained central political figures for the rest of the decade.

But this is a book about Lincoln and about the sagacity of a certain version of equipoise. This is the Lincoln who moves slowly but whose sense of critical mass necessary for decisive change was unparalleled. He actually becomes more advanced in his anti-slavery agenda than Seward and he does so because Lincoln is aware that although you need to stay in touch with the “middle ground” – this middle ground is a mobile not a fixed quantity.

The most difficult of Lincoln’s colleagues turns out to be Chase. Chase works wonders at the treasury but is too concerned to achieve a Presidential nomination to form part of a cohesive team. Ultimately, Chase’s personal ambition disrupts the sectional balance between conservatives and radicals that Lincoln wants at least to be seen to maintain. Chase tenders his resignation on a number of occasions and Lincoln’s tactical brilliance consists of knowing which of these letters to finally say yes to.

I enjoyed the book. The idea that this book offers a sort of masterclass in leadership is arrant nonsense however. What this book shows is that Abraham Lincoln was able to keep a cabinet of heavyweight rivals together for long enough to win a war. It does not show how anyone else could have done so. The compound of wisdom, patience, humility, insight, shrewdness, humour (not the least of Lincoln’s qualities) and not a little low cunning is rarely if ever stirred together in the proper proportions. You cannot do what Lincoln did and hope to successfully run a leisure centre, or a university department, or an abattoir, or whatever – because you are not Abraham Lincoln.

You could call it humanity if you like – the ability to win people over and get the best out of them. But this ability is not about being a great “leader”. It’s about being a great human being.