Four years ago, it was said that the incoming Obama administration aspired to the dynamic that existed in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, where former competitors and antagonists came together to help the country through the Civil War. If Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" was the historical aspiration then, the model to emulate after this election is her earlier book, "No Ordinary Time," about Franklin Roosevelt's domestic policies during the latter years of the Great Depression and into World War II.

The...