Survive and Advance
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…The dangers of the system of election applied to the head of the executive government of a great people have been sufficiently exemplified by experience and by history ... These dangers may be more or less formidable in proportion to the place which the executive power occupies, and to the importance it possesses in the State; and they may vary according to the mode of election and the circumstances in which the electors are placed. The most weighty argument against the election of a chief magistrate is, that it offers so splendid a lure to private ambition, and is so apt to inflame men in the pursuit of power, that when legitimate means are wanting force may not infrequently seize what right denied.
It is clear that the greater the privileges of the executive authority are, the greater is the temptation; the more the ambition of the candidates is excited, the more warmly are their interests espoused by a throng of partisans who hope to share the power when their patron has won the prize. The dangers of the elective system increase, therefore, in the exact ratio of the influence exercised by the executive power in the affairs of State.
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Hitherto no citizen has shown any disposition to expose his honour and his life in order to become the President of the United States; because the power of that office is temporary, limited, and subordinate. The prize of fortune must be great to encourage adventurers in so desperate a game. No candidate as yet has been able to arouse the dangerous enthusiasm or the passionate sympathies of the people in his favour, for the very simple reason that when he is at the head of the Government he has but little power, but little wealth, and but little glory to share among his friends; and his influence in the State is too small for the success or the ruin of a faction to depend upon the elevation of an individual to power.
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...On the other hand, the eyes of the nation are centred on a single point; all are watching the gradual birth of so important an event. The wider the influence of the executive power extends, the greater and the more necessary is its constant action, the more fatal is the term of suspense; and a nation which is accustomed to the government, or, still more, one used to the administrative protection of a powerful executive authority, would be infallibly convulsed by an election of this kind. ...
— Alexis de Tocqueville, excerpts from The Federal Constitution, Democracy in America, 1835 via Google Books