Who is the greatest Democratic President ever? Well, if it’s not FDR, he surely belongs on the short list. Yet FDR did some horrible things, among the worst of which was imprisoning 120,000 innocent Americans because they happened to be of Japanese descent. Does the fact that he did this terrible thing mean he wasn’t a great president? No. Does the fact that he was a great president excuse the internment of Japanese-Americans? No.
If a good person has to be perfect, there is no such thing as a good person. If a wise person must be infallible, there is no such thing as a wise person. And yet, most people seem to act as if a wise person can say no wrong, and a good person can do no wrong.
So predictably Barack Obama taking a $400,000 speaking fee from Wall Street has polarized people. Some say it’s perfectly OK, and others see it as unforgivably corrupt. Let me suggest, however, that those aren’t the only two options.
What’s more let me suggest something which may be heresy in an approval-seeking world of social media: it’s OK for people to disagree about this.
Sometimes disagreements don’t arise out of fundamental disagreements about values, but out of the urgency people feel about certain issues. You have to expect people who feel an extreme degree of urgency about the influence of bankers on government to see Obama’s action toward the corruption end of the scale. It doesn’t mean that people who are defending Obama don’t have any concern about the influence of banks; it could mean they really trust Obama personally and put a high priority on protecting his legacy.
It’s not only OK for Democrats to disagree on something like this (or on Bernie or Hillary for that matter), if we’re going to function as a party we have to get good at disagreeing — by which I mean we have to approach our disagreements in a productive way. Or we can paper over our differences with the illusion of solidarity, but you you only have to look at Republican failures to govern with control of both houses of congress and the White House to see where that leads.
Think about the poll, ask yourself: how far apart can I tolerate other peoples’ opinions before I can’t work with them? Are differences in priorities tantamount to incompatibility of values?