Trump's 2005 "locker room" banter with former TV personality Billy Bush, which the media amplified to such a degree that it appeared to threaten Trump's 2016 presidential candidacy, might be thought to suggest that he was something other than the 18th century's model of a gentleman, but this, too, may miss the mark. Alexander Hamilton, undoubtedly our greatest secretary of Treasury, was nearly done in by an extramarital affair, and even the semisainted Thomas Jefferson blushed to admit that he once "offered love to a handsome lady" who was not his wife. Washington and James Madison were not known for similarly randy behavior, but Madison made clear in the Federalist Papers that our Constitution was designed to come to grips with the fact that men were not angels (if they were, no government would be necessary). Thus the constitutional schemes of separation of powers and federalism, by means of which the framers erected checks and balances to counter inevitable human tendencies to indulge in excessive behavior with harmful consequences.