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Federalist No. 73 demonstrates two instances where the framers of the Constitution designed not for a virtuous system, but for a system riddled with human fallibility. The static nature of executive compensation helps mitigate the human fallibility of the executive.
There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty; but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils; and in the main it will be found that a power over a man’s support is a power over his will.
On the other hand, the qualified veto helps to mitigate the human fallibility that would be present in the legislative branch:
The propriety of the thing does not turn upon the supposition of superior wisdom or virtue in the Executive, but upon the supposition that the legislature will not be infallible; that the love of power may sometimes betray it into a disposition to encroach upon the rights of other members of the government; that a spirit of faction may sometimes pervert its deliberations; that impressions of the moment may sometimes hurry it into measures which itself, on maturer reflection, would condemn.
This paper also includes what could be used as a yardstick to measure how well our government is working:
It is far less probable, that culpable views of any kind should infect all the parts of the government at the same moment and in relation to the same object, than that they should by turns govern and mislead every one of them.
The measure is that the more we see the different branches of government succumbing to the same undesirable forces the worse off our government is doing. Hamilton obviously recognized this as he expressed this hope:
It is to be hoped that it will not often happen that improper views will govern so large a proportion as two thirds of both branches of the legislature at the same time; and this, too, in spite of the counterposing weight of the Executive.