Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism ...

raises doubts about these descriptions’ validity; and (2) the “post-reform” accounts investigate nominations too late in each cycle to understand the direction of the causal arrow correctly. Further, in one instance where primary sources were engaged, there was an inaccurate assertion that Alexander Hamilton's comment about “the people being turbulent and changing” was the reason he suggested at the Constitutional Convention that “the president be elected for life.” Although Hamilton did harbor many concerns about public opinion (e.g., “men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion” and “mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture”), consulting either the full text of his speech that day or The Federalist would have revealed that Hamilton's proposal sprang chiefly from his concern about how to create “a good Executive” (“a general principle of human nature, that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it”) and his belief that “the love of fame [is] the ruling passion of the noblest minds.” Hamilton, according to Madison's notes of the speech at the Constitutional Convention, said,