And that’s the republican principle that human beings have control of their own destiny. That was the point of the republican system. So for example, the consuls. It really does surprise us, there were always two consuls and they served for one year. Imagine if the presidential term was only one year. KRISTOL: Right. And there were two of them. Yeah. CANTOR: And that there were two of them. But the idea was anything to avoid one man from becoming too powerful. So you had the two consuls; they had to agree on major stuff, like going to war. They could veto each other. They only lasted one year, and you could not succeed yourself as consul; you could become consul later. But the idea was to stock Rome with a lot of people who have had top-level executive experience, and they would pride themselves – You know, we talk – I think, what do have we, six living presidents? KRISTOL: Maybe that’s right. Yeah. CANTOR: Yeah. Yeah. They would pride themselves: “We’ve got 42 living consuls.” KRISTOL: Right. Right. Right. CANTOR: And the ideas was nobody can say, “I’m indispensable.” And if someone starts saying, you know, “You can’t win a battle without me” – they say, “Well, we got six guys who won battles. We’ll make one of them consul.” In some ways, if you look at the consulship, it gives you an idea of what Republican Rome was about. First of all, give opportunities of the highest glory to everyone. You know, again, we like to say every American can dream of being president. Maybe, but when you have two consuls changing every year, it sort of was more reasonable to think – if you’re a patrician – that you can, that you have a reasonable expectation of being consul. - conversationswithbillkristol.org