A radical solution to heal and lead our divided country

2020 will go down as one of the craziest years in America's history, and chief among wacko will be this presidential race and election. Despite whose side you land on, you can't deny the ginormous polarizations and divisions across our country. With roughly 70 million votes for each Donald Trump and Joe Biden, with their extremely diverse views and plans for America, the chasm is clear.

I'm not a pessimist. I'm an optimist and a fighter to the end, but, like many of you, I'm also a pragmatist who can read the tea leaves of a brewing storm. Unfortunately, America's present cold civil war only needs a spark to fan it into fury. I know when a miracle is needed, and that time is now. Without a serendipitous plan to bring polarizing sides together, any future president is going to deal with colossal impending riots, lawlessness and other civil unrest.

I believe we can learn lots about our incipient civil war from the real Civil War, and its leader of leaders may show us the way forward. Despite being Republican, Abraham Lincoln is for the most part a hero to both sides of the political aisle. There's a reason he gained that type of rapport and reputation, and it just didn't have to do with freeing slaves: he brought together opposing leaders from both sides of the political aisle.

Lincoln led America forward during one of the most divided times in our history with "a team of rivals" at his side. And the strategies he deployed with them might serve as the wisdom and tools our country needs today. A team of rivals would be the boldest of moves (like it was for Lincoln), but it might just work and even divert a greater national collision.

Newt Gingrich spoke about the idea as a presidential candidate a decade ago: "I think [Abraham] Lincoln was very wise, as was captured in a book called 'Team of Rivals,' in actually developing literally everybody who [was] his opponent ended up in the [presidential] cabinet, because he needed all of them in order to be able to put together the political power during the crisis that we faced."

The book that highlights Lincoln's brilliant action is fully titled, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and presidential historian. In addition to topping charts and receiving scholarly acclaim (with over 4,000 5-star ratings on Amazon), the book itself is political genius and I believe outlines the crucial strategy not only needed to rally Washington but our nation. Goodwin's prize-winning treatise details how Lincoln brought together his candidate rivals by appointing them to key positions in his administration when he became president.

Let me highlight a few critical points from Goodwin's book review:

As these internal Republican feuds suggest, the party in the 1860s was a coalition of politicians who only a few years earlier had been Whigs (Lincoln, Seward, Bates), Democrats (Blair, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin), Free Soilers (Chase), or had flirted with the short-lived anti-immigrant American Party, or Know Nothings (Cameron and Bates). In addition, several cabinet members personally disliked each other: Blair and Chase, Seward and Welles, Chase and Seward, Blair and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who replaced Cameron in January 1862. Lincoln's "political genius" enabled him to herd these political cats and keep them driving toward ultimate victory.

How did he do it? Goodwin deals with this question better than any other writer. Part of the answer lay in Lincoln's steadfastness of purpose, which inspired subordinates to overcome their petty rivalries. Part of it lay in his superb sense of timing and his sensitivity to the pulse of public opinion as he moved to bring along a divided people to the support of "a new birth of freedom." And part of it lay in Lincoln's ability to rise above personal slights, his talent for getting along with men of clashing ideologies and personalities who could not get along with each other.

Whether you agree with Lincoln or not, his team of rivals worked, propelled his leadership, and ultimately unified the country enough to move it forward.

Isn't our divided country again ripe for a new "team of rivals," made up of those who each lead a significant part of the nations' divides? Maybe include past presidential candidates and other vetted, qualified and esteemed national leaders who are known for their large followings?

This Washington political dream team, if you will, would be a true test of all contenders' patriotism and leadership servanthood: Do they love and want to save our country enough to take a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc., seat in the presidential administration? If they've already allocated time to serve our country, what just reason could they give not to do so through the next president even if they don't completely agree with him?

Forget the rhetoric. Forget presidential business as usual. Forget typical partisan infighting. Desperate times call for desperate measures and clever strategies. It's time for the gloves to come off. This fight to unite America and move it forward is the ultimate UFC Championship political brawl. And the winner will take all: either the perpetuity of our founders' republic or of a progressive agenda that will once and for all fundamentally transform the United States of America.

Abraham Lincoln said, "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

Lincoln also leaned on the wisdom of Jesus when it came to collective success, as he repeatedly said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I feel like we are standing at a crossroad similar to that at which George Washington stood when he wrote to James Madison in 1786, just a few years prior to the first president's election: "No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."