If we cannot trust rulers when they appear to act well, how can we trust them when we know they are acting badly? If we cannot trust them when their hands are clean, how can we trust them when their hands are dirty? In politics we want rulers to be trustworthy, but we treat them as if “every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end … than private interest.” We want rulers to possess the morality of doves, but we wish them to act as if they were serpents. We want them to act well toward ourselves but badly toward our enemies. We hope they are successful as long as the benefit is ours and we are not the victims of their success. They should be both lion and fox, honest and deceitful in turn for the protection and furtherance of our common purposes. We wish them to be “trusting but not credulous.” In political morality such ambivalences are endemic.