Team of Dysfunctional Schemers?

Dimitri will greatly enjoy this quote from Sean Wilentz's essay in The New Republic, Who Lincoln Was:

[Harold] Holzer's intense admiration of Lincoln sometimes leads him to make too much of a good thing. In accord with the argument presented by Doris Kearns Goodwin's recent book describing Lincoln's cabinet as a "team of rivals" -- an easily exaggerated view cited so often during the Obama transition that it became one of the platitudes of our day--Holzer is persuaded of the brilliance of Lincoln's selections. Holzer accurately presents Lincoln the cabinet-maker as a hard-nosed politician, who made good on promises extended during the fight for the Republican nomination (although the book could have said more on this), and who sought to placate every element of his faction-ridden party. Yet Lincoln's approach to the task was nothing new. Moreover, the cabinet that he picked was a dysfunctional collection of schemers far more than it was a team of any kind.

(Emphasis added)