Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

How do we reconcile the Lincoln who professed slavery to be “so great an evil” with the man who put forward a bill to promote the spread of a fugitive slave law into the District of Columbia? Reconciliation is not difficult. Lincoln’s personal views, not only on slavery, but also on the rights, of “negroes” under the Declaration of Independence were extremist views in the context of the times. Lincoln believed that the Declaration correctly stated that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Today it is difficult for us to imagine how extreme a view this was seen to be when applied to nonwhites. Chief Justice Taney, in writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott matter, did address this question and concluded, “In the opinion of the court, . . . the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show[s], that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.” Thus, the law of the land, as stipulated by the Supreme Court, differed dramatically from Abraham Lincoln’s opinion. So, too, did the view of Stephen Douglas, generally regarded in his own time as a moderate on the slavery issue. He mocked Lincoln and the rest of the “black Republicans” for contending that the founding fathers had “Negroes” in mind, suggesting that Lincoln even favored—shockingly at the time—intermarriage. In Douglas’s opinion, “This Government was made by our fathers on the white basis . . . made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”19

Douglas questioned the very idea that slaves could be considered as “persons,” let alone as people with rights. They were to him, as they were in Taney’s interpretation of the Constitution, simply property like any other property, with no rights. Hard as it is today to tolerate his statements about blacks and about Lincoln, we must remember that he really was a moderate on the slavery issue—so much so that the southern perception of Douglas as a moderate translated into his being seen as too antislavery to be acceptable to southern Democrats, who abandoned him in the presidential election of 1860.

So, on the one hand, Lincoln, the extremist, rather courageously argued that the Declaration of Independence referred to all people and that therefore slavery was an abomination. On the other hand, being a pragmatist, he chose to remain silent before the Dred Scott decision promised the spread of slavery throughout the territories and future states of the United States. The Supreme Court decision persuaded Lincoln to speak out against slavery. It provided the context for his political advancement.

Lincoln: A Failed and a Fulfilled Politician

THAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS AMBITIOUS IS NEITHER IN DOUBT NOR A criticism. Few people do great things without trying to. That he did great things is, as well, not in doubt, but exactly how and why he did them needs deeper consideration. For one thing, while we might readily accept that Lincoln’s time as president produced momentous changes in America, still we might wonder to what extent these changes required Lincoln. And then, even more, why he is often described as our country’s most brilliant politician, a man who balanced disparate views within his cabinet, drawing adversaries together and bringing the nation to victory in its most trying time.20 Indeed, even the notion that building a cabinet of rivals was evidence of good politics is highly questionable, despite its being the received wisdom.

Many people like to think that the best politicians surround themselves with diverse points of view, listen to arguments on all sides, and then, evaluating the competing arguments, make their decisions. Yet logic and experience instruct us that the opposite is true. Better decisions are likely to be made when leaders surround themselves with yes-men. This is so alien a thought, so contrary to conventional wisdom, that it is necessary for us to pause and elaborate on the logic of the claim. We believe doing so will prove enlightening about what actually makes for good decision making and why being surrounded by rival opinions often translates, as perhaps it did for Lincoln, into unnecessarily prolonged periods of indecision or worse.

Consider the difficult problem a president has in assessing diverse opinions on subjects he—thus far we have only had men as president—knows relatively little about. We must realize that the president’s advisers are likely to have their own interests and inevitably some of those interests are likely to differ from his. Overseeing departments that specialize in specific areas, cabinet members are likely to have more direct access to information than the president has on any given topic of debate. But they also have incentives to shade the information they present to the president, so as to favor their own point of view and their own advancement. Thus, the president cannot count on an honest exchange of information across colleagues whose objectives diverge from his own. This well-known and well-studied matter is referred to as the principal-agent problem.

One solution to the principal-agent problem is to have redundant sources of information. Another is to be surrounded by like-minded people, which adds a further benefit for the president. Imagine that someone who has routinely disagreed with the president in the past once again disagrees with him today on an important policy matter related, say, to war and peace. What can the president learn from such disagreement? Nothing really. The president already knows that the “rival” adviser sees the world differently than he does and so is likely to dismiss whatever the “rival” has to say as simply “same old, same old.” Now imagine that an adviser who is known by the president to just about always agree with him, tells the president that his approach to an issue is wrong and needs to change. This is “real” information that is likely to lead the president to reconsider his opinion. After all, someone known to see the world the way he does now disagrees—it is not “same old, same old.”

Lyndon Johnson had a dissident adviser in George Ball, undersecretary of state in his administration, and he also had his close friend, Clark Clifford, as secretary of defense late in his term. Ball constantly told Johnson that Vietnam was a mistake and Johnson ignored him. It was just more of the “same old, same old.” When Clifford, who Johnson understood saw the world pretty much the way he did, told him that Vietnam was a political mistake and he needed to get out, Johnson modified his policy. He listened to the yes-man who suddenly disagreed with him; he ignored the naysayer who always disagreed. There was less benefit from having Ball’s council than there was from having Clifford’s.21 A cabinet of rivals is more likely an indication of weak leadership than it is of statesmanship and political acumen. Just as LBJ understood this, so, too, did Abraham Lincoln.

Despite the praise Lincoln receives for having surrounded himself with political opponents, it is noteworthy that he was not eager to do so, and whenever he could, he avoided doing so. His private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, for instance, reported, “We see such frequent allusion to a supposed purpose on the part of Mr. Lincoln to call into his cabinet two or three Southern gentlemen, from the parties opposed to him politically, that we are prompted to ask a few questions. ‘First. Is it known that any such gentleman of character, would accept a place in the cabinet? Second. If yes, on what terms? Does he surrender to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lincoln to him, on the political difference between them? Or do they enter upon the administration in open opposition to each other?’” They then noted how Lincoln resolved these questions: “The selection of enemies being out of the question, Mr. Lincoln, in execution of long-matured plans, proceeded to choose his friends, and the best and ablest.”22 What, then, characterized the rivals that he ultimately did bring into the cabinet? The answer as provided by historian Edward Conrad Smith is, “Shortly after the election he determined to give the former democratic element of the Republican party a strong representation in his cabinet, with a view to uniting the North.”23 That is, Lincoln included fellow Republicans whose opposition needed to be mollified or neutralized, much as Barack Obama included Hillary Rodham Clinton, his erstwhile political adversary, in his cabinet—and then he proceeded to pursue the policies and strategies he favored.