CraigM
12238
Nobody ever talks about Ford, except for the fact he was the only person to become president who nobody ever voted for in any form (being a replacement VP). I mean it is basically all I know about him, other than something to do with him and college football. So that is kind of a mark in his favor, I suppose.
Granted he was also almost a decade prior to my being born, so there is that.
Well, if you overlook The Deal, maybe.
Well, yeah, good point. I assume youâre referring to the infamous pardon of Richard Nixon.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar.
Timex
12242
All jokes aside, I defy you to actually point to any real contributions that Trump ever made in his entire life that balance out any of his terrible stuff.
Thatâs the thing, Trump never did anything, ever, that wasnât motivated by personal greed.
If Trump had some 80 some years of public service like Dole, then maybe it would be more complex, but he didnât do any of that.
As I suggested to Brian, the problem isnât simply passing judgement on another person⌠Thatâs fine. The problem is picking one thing from that personâs life, and erroneously distilling their entire existence down into that singular facet.
abrandt
12243
If I ever take the 20 minute drive and visit the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum Iâll be sure to fill you in on some of the details.
I mean, the whole point of that speech is to start a riot. Careful!
Just donât bang your head into anything ;)
KevinC
12246
For me I think it depends on what that one thing is. If someone shoots up a school I bet you would judge the person on that one action and not really care too much if he was a conscientious employee who was never late for his shift.
Serving in the war and fighting literal Nazis is very commendable. It was also 75+ years ago. Putting his support behind a corrupt demagogue who tried to overthrow our government was a very recent thing. His support of the tobacco industry was a recent thing. Perhaps those things tell us much more about the man who died then the man he may have been three quarters of a century earlier.
Timex
12247
But the thing is, no matter how good or bad one thing is, itâs NOT the entire existence.
It may be that itâs so big that it counterbalances everything else. Thatâs cool⌠but no single thing should ever provide an excuse for even weighing in everything else.
But itâs impossible to review and judge every single action, decision, or belief a person holds. At some point, a line is drawn. If someone were a member of the Nazi party, or sexually abused a child, how much further research would you need to conduct before being okay weighing in with your opinion of them with the knowledge you have at hand?
This might be enough to conclude that Werner von Braun was a morally bad human (plus yâknow the whole slave labor thing), but whatever the âfinal wordâ on him is should also mention his contribution to space flight.
Also, IIRC Oskar Schindler was a card carrying Nazi.
There are people who have done truly momentous good and evil in the same life. Probably the more power a person acquires, the easier it is for this to be the case. E.g., FDR and Japanese-American internment. Or Fritz Haber, who weaponized gas but also revolutionized agriculture.
I donât mean to imply that someone canât do both wonderful and terrible things in their lifeâthatâs clearly true. People are extremely complicated, and any judgment will necessarily be generalized and unexhaustive.
But how much do you need to know about a person before it is okay to express a general opinion of them and their character?
I guess what I was trying to say was: I donât think anyone here is judging Bob Dole solely on a âEndorsed Trump: Yes/Noâ binary. Everyone commenting is aware of him to some extent, and their judgment is necessarily based on their collective knowledge and understanding of the man. This knowledge will never be complete. And the âgood/badâ weights for each piece of knowledge varies from person to person, based on their own values and beliefs. I think itâs both possible and understandable for someone to assign such importance to the vocal support of Trump that it outweighs any other deeds that Dole accomplished, and accordingly, if they had to assign a label of âgoodâ or âevilâ, they land on the latter.
Really, it seems that the issue Timex has comes down to how these other posters assign importance to the various components of Doleâs life in ways that differ from his own.
I think what everyone here is saying is, who cares that Bob Dole died? None of us knew him.
Good question.
I think the hagiographic obits of recently deceased paleorepublicans definitely have an element of nostalgia for a pre-Trump era driving them. It will be curious to see, as Scott predicts, whether Dubya would get the same treatment, although his passing could be 10-20 years off and therefore in a different political landscape.
Bill Clintonâs obit may lean heavily on the Me Too-ness of it all, I suspect⌠time will tell. A lot of this stuff is highly contextual with the time of death, of course.
Calelari
12255
Iâm with @Thrag. All yâall failing to respect Bob Doleâs choice of pronouns are profoundly disrespecting Bob Dole. Bob Dole would be disappointed but Bob Dole would, maybe, also understand.
I have nothing else to add because @CraigM already posted Fredâs (slacktivistâs) writings on the subject that I macro into pretty much every one of these discussions about how to speak about the dead.
CraigM
12256
Maybe. And if they do, I doubt you see people getting the vapors the same way about that. If people were to make his legacy and impeachment, and inappropriate behavior a part of the focus upon his death, I doubt you see an equivalent to that Fox chyron on MSNBC, let alone CNN.
And thatâs a good thing.
