In Federalist 67, Publius uses a strong word to describe the "devices...which have been contrived to pervert the public opinion in relation to the subject" of the office of the president. That word is "wicked."
Why would he call these devices wicked? It is because he thinks that the ones who adopt these devices are deliberately deceiving the people for their own gain--and by so doing are placing in jeopardy the very lives, liberties, and properties of the people, which (in his opinion) depend on the adoption of the US Constitution.
To this willingness of some opinion-makers to deceive, add the vulnerability of the people to being deceived by such devices, as Hamilton describes it in a speech to the NY Ratifying Convention: "To deny that [the body of the people] are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise."
What you end up with is a potentially fatal weak spot in a country dedicated to liberty.
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