WASHINGTON, DC (AP):

Presidents typically say they want to be surrounded by strong-willed people who have the courage to disagree with them. President-elect Barack Obama, reaching out to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans, actually might mean it.

Abraham Lincoln meant it when he took office in 1861 with pro-slavery secessionist southern states about to launch the American Civil War. He appointed his bitter adversaries to crucial posts, choosing as war secretary .a man who had called him a "long-armed ape" who "does not know anything and can do you no good".

You could say Lincoln's Cabinet meetings were frank and open.

Richard Nixon did not mean it.

"I don't want a government of yes-men," he declared. But among all the president's men, those who said no, did so at their peril. He went down a path of destruction in the company of sycophants.

'Team of rivals'

It so happens that Obama and New York Senator Clinton share a reverence for Team of Rivals, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about how Lincoln brought foes into his fold. Clinton listed it during the campaign as the last book she had read. Obama, clearly a student of Lincoln, spoke of it several times.

Now past could be prologue.

Obama is considering Clinton for secretary of state or another senior position, meeting John McCain on Monday to see how his Republican presidential rival might help him in the Senate, and sizing up one-time opponents in both parties for potential recruitment. He made one Democratic presidential opponent, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, his vice-presidential pick.

"I think it reflects a great inner strength on Obama's part that he is seriously considering creating a team of rivals as Lincoln did," Goodwin told The Associated Press on Friday.

"By surrounding himself with people who bring different perspectives, he will increase his options, absorb dissenting views and heighten his ability to speak empathetically to people on different sides of each issue. The challenge, of course, is to ensure that the discussions do not become paralysing, and that once a decision is made, the inner circle accepts that the time for debate is over," she said.

Bitter primary campaign

During the bitter primary campaign, Clinton dismissed Obama as a neophyte who could not be trusted to handle crises and who had not done much more in politics than make fancy speeches. Obama sniffed that "you're likable enough, Hillary".

Yet, she strongly supported Obama in the general election campaign, not unlike William Henry Seward, the Hillary Clinton of his day.

Seward, the front-runner in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination, was so confident of taking the prize that he went on an eight-month tour of Europe a year earlier, only to see Lincoln vanquish him. Lincoln buried animosities and made him secretary of state.

Lincoln also enlisted Democrat Edwin Stanton as his second war secretary, despite being humiliated by Stanton years earlier when they worked together as trial lawyers. Salmon P. Chase, a constant critic of Lincoln and another Republican rival, became his treasury secretary. Other rivals were put in the Cabinet, too.

Lincoln's reasoning: "We needed the strongest men. These were the very strongest men. I had no right to deprive the country of their services."