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Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, Paul Volcker, Robert Gates -- all figures with deep Washington experience, big egos, and their own agendas. Some were Barack Obama's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Several are veterans of the Bill Clinton era. One is a holdover from the Bush administration.

"I did not ask for assurances from these individuals that they would agree with me at all times," Obama said last week.

The new generation Obama brings to power does not identify with the Left-Right battles of the 1960s.

Can this "Team of Rivals" approach work? Abraham Lincoln tried it. He was certainly a great president, but he had to deal with Cabinet crises, disloyalty, and resignations that, historians say, may have endangered the war effort. Can the people Obama is hiring work as a team?

President Reagan's team shared a conservative vision. Obama insists his own vision is not ideological. Ideology divides the country: red America versus blue America. Obama is talking about a desire for change that unites the country. "What I am excited about is a consensus not only among those of us standing here today but, I think, a broad cross section of the American people," he said when he introduced his national security team.

What defines that consensus? "People don't want to continue a budget argument about big government or small government," Obama explained. "They want smart government and effective government." So, he's appointing people who are smart and effective.

But if so many of his appointees are tied to the past, where will the vision for change come from? "I'm going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House," the president-elect said. "But understand," he added, "I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made."

Obama's Cabinet appointments are yet another signal that he intends to pursue a different kind of politics. Still more signs: his decision to meet with Republican presidential nominee John McCain after defeating him; his advice to Senate Democrats not to punish Sen. Joe Lieberman harshly for party disloyalty; and his dispatch of his new chief of staff to meet with Republican congressional leaders. On the day before the election, Obama declared, "If we want to meet the challenges of this moment, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between Left and Right." He appears to be taking that statement seriously.

And the public likes it. In a CNN poll taken by Opinion Research last week, three-quarters of Americans said they approve of Obama's Cabinet appointments. So did a majority of Republicans.

Obama is not the first president to set out to end the cultural civil war that has defined American politics since the 1960s. Bill Clinton called himself a New Democrat and promised a "Third Way." George W. Bush talked of being a "compassionate conservative" and pledged to be "a uniter, not a divider."

But the two Baby Boomer presidents ended up being defined by the cultural divide: Clinton by his liberal values -- gun control, gays in the military, abortion rights -- more than his centrist policies; Bush by his neoconservative views more than his compassion. Clinton divided the country. Bush divided it more. "One of the big disappointments of the presidency has been the fact that the tone in Washington got worse, not better," Bush told ABC News.

Obama was born at the tail end of the Baby Boom. The new generation he brings to power -- "Generation O," it's being called -- does not identify with the Left-Right battles of the 1960s. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes about moving beyond "the psychodrama of the Baby Boom -- a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago -- played out on the national stage."

It was Hillary Clinton who ran for president as the tough partisan fighter. "If I tell you I will fight for you, that is exactly what I intend to do," she said during the primary campaign. Obama's style is different -- not partisan or ideological but more casual, cool, and connected, like Generation O.

A Team of Rivals requires a strong, self-confident president. Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt both made the concept work. Can a cool and casual president also be a tough guy? We'll see.