Published: Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009

Historian: Obama should take pointers from Abe Lincoln

SARASOTA — Abraham Lincoln, who won over political rivals who helped him to win the Civil War and abolish slavery, could be a good role model for President Barack Obama, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said Monday.

Political rivals for the presidency, once they have suffered election defeat, often remain among the strongest and most able people on the national stage, she said during a news conference preceding her lecture at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

It is a truism apparently not lost on Obama, since he appointed his fiercest opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, to his Cabinet.

“Hillary Clinton was his biggest rival,” said Goodwin. “I think she’ll be a very good secretary of State.”

Goodwin also noted that Obama has appointed Republicans to Cabinet posts in his Democratic administration. While advice from those who may categorically disagree with a president is important, a confident leader has no trouble making his own decisions.

“Obama will have to decide what he’ll have to do” about the welter of sticky problems he faces, said the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and author.

Goodwin, of Concord, Mass., was lecturing before an audience of 1,700, one in a series of speakers sponsored by the Ringling College Library Association.

She said the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday in approaching, and that she considers him America’s most fascinating president.

One of the best indicators of leadership success is the ability to motivate oneself despite severe frustration and repeated failure, and Lincoln did that very well, Goodwin said.

“He refused to give in to despair,” said Goodwin, adding that Lincoln found consolation in the idea that he might be able to leave the world a better place.

His devotion to accomplishing worthy goals in life kept him from suicide at one point, she told the crowd.

Among the political rivals he bested for the presidency and whom he eventually appointed to his Cabinet was William H. Seward, a man who became secretary of state and one of Lincoln’s most intimate friends.

Salmon P. Chase, who made no secret that he thought he would make a better president than Lincoln, settled for the post of secretary of Treasury and served ably, Goodwin said. Lincoln later elevated him to chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another political rival who had disparaged Lincoln early in his career but later joined his Cabinet as Secretary of War was Edwin M. Stanton, whose utterance on Lincoln’s assassination has become among the most famous of all quotations: “Now he belongs to the ages.”