I was surprised to see Douglas Brinkley appearing on the Rachel Maddow show this evening, and being touted as a "distiguished presidential historian".
Brinkley, who David Plotz at Slate once referred to as "...the William Ginsburg of the (John) Kennedy (Jr.) death circus.", was asked to comment on President-elect Obama's stated plans to base his cabinet on the Lincoln model, by bringing in people, such as possible Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who have differing views from his own in order to afford himself the widest possible range of advice from which to make his decisions, and to "...keep his friends close, and his enemies closer."
Brinkley proceeded to make assertions at odds with the known facts regarding Lincoln's relations with his Secretary of State, William Seward.
Brinkley correctly identified Seward as a political rival before Lincoln's election as President, but then falsely asserted that bringing Seward into the cabinet "...didn't turn out so well."
In fact, Seward, who was indeed a political rival and had a pretty low opinion of Lincoln before the election, changed his tune considerably as he worked with the President during the turmoil of the Civil War. Though they never became really close friends, Seward developed a deep respect for Lincoln's thought processes and decision making, and the President came to consider Seward as essential to his running of the administration.
Lincoln scholar, Lewis E. Lehrman wrote:
Seward wrote his wife within a few months of taking office: "There is but one vote in the Cabinet, and that is cast by the President." New York journalist-politician Henry J. Raymond went to a dinner party at Seward's and reported in his diary: "Of President Lincoln he spoke in the strongest terms of praise. With all his defects, he said, he seemed just the man for the crisis. Patient, capable of endurance, just and tolerant beyond example, he said that Providence had raised him up for this emergency as signally as He raised up Washington for the necessities of our struggle for independence."
Seward biographer John M. Taylor wrote:
"James Scovel, a New Jersey-born newspaper reporter who enjoyed Lincoln's confidence, had excellent access to the White House; on occasion he was even admitted on Sunday mornings, a period normally reserved for Seward and the presidential barber. Scovel could not forget the sight of Lincoln discussing recent developments with his secretary of state. 'Mr. Seward in conversation was slow and methodical till warmed up, when he was one of the most eloquent of talkers,' Scovel recalled. But he thought the two made an odd couple. 'The impression following an hour with Seward and Lincoln was surprise that the two men seemingly so unlike in habit of thought and manner of speech could act in such perfect accord.' Even in the early months of his administration Lincoln had deferred to his secretary of state in a way that irritated men like Chase and Welles. Now, with Seward's adroit handling of the Trent affair, Lincoln believed that his original judgment had been fully vindicated."
In the Slate article, Plotz writes:
...his public history has its shortcomings. His idols, Ambrose and Schlesinger, have won the admiration of the academy and the public. Brinkley has won the public but has not wowed the academy. Some of his colleagues' dismay is simply jealousy of his entrepreneurship, but some is more substantive. His books read like good journalism--and that's no insult--but they are not great history. "He has made no analytical contribution at all," says one Ivy League historian who professes to like Brinkley.
On TV, Maddow seemed to accept his faulty pronouncements about Lincoln and Seward as gospel. One has to wonder if perhaps she, or her staff needs to do a little more homework before turning such an "historian" loose on the public.