Uncommon Knowledge: Trump's Rob Reiner Insult and the Death of Dissent

Ronald Reagan liked allies who agreed with him just 80 percent of the time; Abraham Lincoln preferred rivals who disagreed with him most of the time—and put three of them in his Cabinet. Barack Obama, nodding to Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, made his 2008 primary opponent Hillary Clinton his secretary of state, a sign of managed friction in the Situation Room. That tradition—inviting argument to sharpen judgment—used to be engrained in American politics.