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The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States, Canada,

and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch. Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting,

fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling, wonderful, and tragic stories

of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders, environment, and geography. I invite you to come along for the ride.

History is in just a bunch of names, and dates, and facts. It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history

that explained how and why we got here. Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

One of the most powerful bodies in the American federal government is the presidential cabinet.

This is a private advisory board for the president, but what's interesting is that the US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet.

In fact, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected the idea. And in fact, for the first two and a half years of George Washington's first administration, he didn't have a cabinet.

So why did he create one? How did it become one of the most powerful bodies in the federal government?

And why is it something that can just about determine whether a presidency fails or succeeds? Consider the Doris Kern's Goodwin book, Team of Rivals, where she argues that the way that Abraham Lincoln set up his cabinet was what allowed him to win the Civil War.

I'm looking into this topic today with Lindsay Trevinsky, who's the author of the new book, The Cabinet, George Washington, and the creation of an American institution.

The story starts in 1791 when George Washington convened his department secretaries Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and M and Randolph for the first cabinet meeting.

The US Constitution didn't create or provide for such a body, so Washington was on his own.

This group of advisors was based on the councils of war that Washington held as commander of the continental army.

And it helped him overcome diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, like a whiskey rebellion in 1794, and constitutional conventions. And he did this because he thought that congressional help was lacking.

So in this discussion, we look at what his cabinet was like and how far apart politically were Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and others, whether they were as close as a modern day Rockefeller Republican and West Belt Democrat would be, or they were as far apart from each other as, say, Alexander Acasio Cortez

and Steve King would be completely opposite sides on left and right. We'll also discuss how cabinets could make a presidency succeed or fail, what makes a good cabinet.

And finally, I ask Lindsay, if she were president, how would she select her cabinet, would she just survey the land of the United States and choose the most competent people, or would she look for loyalty above all else so that the cabinet members don't try to leak things to the press and subtly and sneakily try to destroy her presidency as some cabinet members did in the past.

And I really good look at the inside of American power politics, and I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Lindsay Trevinsky. Lindsay, welcome to the show.

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