Intrepid in making bad policy, or restrained (but makes good choices)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-sartwell3sep03.story
COMMENTARY
Philosophically, It's a Pure Choice
Intrepid in making bad policy, or restrained (makes good choices) but (political)cowardly. Pick one.
By Crispin Sartwell
Crispin Sartwell teaches political science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. His latest book is "Six Names of Beauty" (Routledge 2004).

September 3, 2004

A basic distinction in philosophical ethics concerns the evaluation of persons as against the evaluation of actions.

The former, which revolves around questions of character, is a tradition that stretches back to Plato and Aristotle. It's called "virtue ethics." The latter often evaluates actions by their results. The utilitarians — for example, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill — assessed acts morally by whether they tended to increase or decrease the sum of human happiness.

I suggest that in the current presidential race, these two moral frameworks are in direct conflict. George W. Bush is the better man. John F. Kerry is the less disastrous maker of policy.

Obviously, character and action are intertwined, and if someone often does bad things, we think this shows who she is.

On the other hand, good acts are what we would expect a good person to do.

But they can come apart. Your moral character has something to do with the "way" you do things. For example, a criminal can display courage or forthrightness or temperance or loyalty. In fact, the more virtues he displays, the more effective criminal he is liable to be, and so the worse his actions.

Bush's policies have been disastrous. The Patriot Act and other legislation, as well as court cases brought by his evangelical Justice Department, constitute a serious attack on the U.S. Constitution, that is, on our basic form of government.

His tax cuts have plunged us into massive deficit spending.

His choices about where to intervene internationally have been morally indefensible: invading a quiescent Iraq while placating North Korea and watching genocide in Sudan.

On the other hand, he has pursued these aims — as well as many others that are much more morally defensible — with clarity, steadfastness and at least some degree of political courage. He is, we might say, intrepid. <snip>