another plan, edmund randolph of virginia says how about having three presidents at once. he's talking about three regional presidents, and then you have alexander hamilton of new york who wants a very strong executive, so he says how about president for lifetime which needless to say having gotten rid of king a few years ago was not overly popular to these men so eventually they settle on the president for four years at a time, but then they have that level of electoral college, and we get a lot of questions about that here. why, why would they do that electoral college? there's probably several reasons. one of them is simple distance, the idea of having states that are days and days and weeks apart of each other from georgia to new hampshire with not a lot of great roads and travels can be difficult, so -- so having this notion of sending people together to vote makes a lot of sense mechanically and then also you have this idea that with the electoral college you're making sure the smaller states have a certain amount of say, so you're trying to balance a lot of differen

edmund randolph won't sign it but he's always one of those guys who like to hedge his bets. he ends up supporting it when virginia is voting on it but would not actually sign it in this room because he's afraid guys at home like patrick henry will go against him because he knows patrick henry is one of those guys that doesn't think this is a good idea. the other one, george mason is looking at the idea of a bill of rights. he kind of wants to see that, so he is not crazy about parts of it. a lot of guys in the big states like the senate. there are all kinds of issues but most men put aside their doubts and sign their names. september 17, 1787. franklin looks at the chair where washington sits and looks behind washington's head, this carving of a half sun on the back of the chair and says all summer i've been trying to decide whether that is a half sun, is it supposed to be rising or setting and i could not make up my mind util now. now, at length, i have the happiness to know that is a rising and not a setting sun. and he felt good. he had been working on this since the 1750