Even more on books and the presidential race

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote this month about whether it's possible for a presidential candidate to bring a "Team of Rivals" into the White House. (I'm sporadically reading her book of the same name right now. It's long.). She says what Abraham Lincoln did -- making his political opponents part of his presidential cabinet -- would be much more difficult today in the era of professional, partisan campaigns and the 24-hour news cycle.
But lest you think days gone by were more civil, check this out from Goodwin's essay:

In selecting (Edwin) Stanton as his secretary of war, Lincoln revealed a critical ability to put aside past grudges. He and Stanton had first met when they worked together on a trial in Cincinnati in the 1850s. At first sight of the ungainly Lincoln, with his disheveled hair and ill-fitting clothes, Stanton dubbed him a "long-armed ape" and remarked that "he does not know anything and can do you no good." For the rest of the trial, Stanton ignored Lincoln and refused even to open the brief his colleague Lincoln had painstakingly prepared. Lincoln was humiliated.

Read her essay here.

As a side note, Barack Obama said "Team of Rivals" is the one book aside from the Bible that he would bring to the White House with him. Not that I want to give that too much importance. Katie Couric asked all the presidential candidates that question back during the primaries, and the candidates were pretty clearly making fast responses to an unexpected question, not really mulling over an answer for all time. John McCain, for instance, said he'd bring Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." But the Washington Post recently revealed that John McCain's favorite book is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. (Go papa!)

In the novel, (Robert) Jordan, an American volunteer on the anti-fascist side of the Spanish Civil War, finds love, then chooses death in service to a hopeless cause he believes in. In last week's interview, conducted in the leather-covered first-class seats of his campaign plane, McCain was asked if he, like Jordan, is a "romantic fatalist." McCain answered quickly and forcefully: "Yes, yes." (McCain aide Mark ) Salter described his boss's fatalistic philosophy: "Life sucks, but it's worth doing something about anyway."

Read the WaPost profile of McCain here.