acroyear | on Politicians as they should be...

[He] had the pride of a Roman, and some Roman vices, too -- arrogance, a prejudice in favor of men of property, an incurable distaste for "The Mob."

But he also had a great Roman virtue, that of magnanimity. He did not complain or recriminate because he had lost. To me, [he] - not a fashionable figure in our day - represents the politician at his very best, showing an absence of malace, "a steady willingness," in Mencken's phrase, "to believe that his opponent is as honorable a man as himself, and may be right."

-- Alistair Cooke, on Alexander Hamilton.