Barack Obama has for some time now been compared to President Lincoln, most recently because of his alleged commitment to a 'Team of Rivals" approach to building his administration. The term refers to a book written about how Lincoln brought former opponents into his administration and utilized their knowledge and expertise to better serve the country. As Obama has reached out both to Hilary Clinton and Republicans, it seems as though he may actually be following this same path. Interestingly, this ties in very closely to a part of our second exam. The question on groupthink popped into my head almost immediately after reading the headline of an article about this particular issue. If Obama does decide to include opposition and even former enemies in his decision-making group will this serve to build an administration with the very best ability to serve the country and make sound decisions (because of its diversity of opinion and background)? Or will we find that decisions become increasingly harder and perhaps foster feelings of animosity between members of the group which is clearly not beneficial for the American people.
Hopefully, having a diverse group that includes Obama foes will have a positive effect on his ability to lead. By doing so he would not only be increasing the amount of intelligence and opinion among his staff but he would also be fostering a bipartisanship that could help him should he need aid from Republicans in the future. Should a side of the issue be lost or ignored, I think we can be sure that in a bipartisan Cabinet, that option will be put on the table. In this way, Obama can also insure that his own power will not grow so large as to overshadow opinions and options that could be beneficial to the task at hand. On the other hand however, this choice could allow for decision-making to be mired in opposition and anger which would present a disunited front both to the American people and to governments abroad. Clearly, this is not the kind of image we want to display on an international stage, especially considering our precarious situation in the world at this moment.
Hopefully whatever choice Obama makes will be in the best interest of his country and will prove to be that which can help us fix the massive problems that we are facing right now. Also, I would hope that the phenomenon of groupthink could be abated by a decision to include diverse Cabinet members and thus avoid some of the pitfalls of past presidencies which have fallen victim to this tendency.
Here is an article about Obama's "Team of Rivals" and a wikipedia overview of the term "groupthink"
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