In the field of politics, Livingston's search for office did not result in a happy career. So long as he stood for a broader and stronger national life his intellectual rays flashed far beyond the horizon of most of his contemporaries, but the joy of public life was clouded when he entered the domain of partisan politics. His mortification that someone other than himself was appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, made Hamilton's funding system, especially the proposed assumption of State debts, sufficient excuse for becoming an anti-federalist, and had he possessed those qualities of leadership that bind party and friends by ties of unflinching service, he might have reaped the reward that his ambition so ardently craved; but his peculiar temper unfitted him for such a career. Jealous, fretful, sensitive, and suspicious, he was as restless as his eloquence was dazzling, and when, at last, he became the anti-federalist candidate for governor in 1798, in opposition to John Jay, the campaign ended in deep humiliation. His candidacy was clearly a dash for the Presidency. He reasoned, as every ambitious New York statesman has reasoned from that day to this, that if he could carry the State in an off year, he would be needed, as the candidate of his whole party, in a Presidential year. This reasoning reduces the governorship to a sort of springboard from which to vault into the White House, and although only one man in a century has performed the feat, it has always figured as a popular and potent factor in the settlement of political nominations. George Clinton thought the Presidency would come to him, and Hamilton inspired Jay with a similar notion; but Livingston, sanguine of better treatment, was willing, for the sake of undertaking it, voluntarily to withdraw from the professional path along which he had moved to great distinction. The personal qualities which seemed to unfit Livingston for political leadership in New York did not strengthen his usefulness in France. It was the breadth of view which distinguished him in the formation of the Union that brought him success as a diplomat. With the map of America spread out before him he handled the Louisiana problem as patriotically as he had argued for a stronger national life, and when, at last, he signed the treaty, he had forever enlarged the geography of his country.