Should it be this hard? This tortured? I don’t know Behar or follow him on Twitter, but the reaction to his initial Bush tweet and his response to that became a kind of cause célèbre among some people I do know. They talked or tweeted about the whole episode as an example of how fractiously far we’ve fallen. The television commentator Nicolle Wallace, the former United States attorney Preet Bharara and Lanny Davis, the prominent Democratic lawyer who represents Michael Cohen, all publicly expressed support for Behar.

The tussle over remembrances of Bush echoed the tussles over remembrances of Senator John McCain, when detractors howled about any framing of him as a hero — McCain, who was captured and, for years, tortured by the North Vietnamese and who refused early release unless his fellow prisoners were also freed.

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Yes, there were issues, grave ones, to be taken with his positions on American military intervention and with his domestic record. But there was valor galore, across decades of public service, and it’s possible, even imperative, to acknowledge and celebrate that.

That’s not to say that Bush or McCain, even in death, warrants only tributes. A mix of appreciations and censorious assessments is in order, and it’s very much arguable that the first wave of takes on Bush, including one that I wrote for The Times, tilted excessively toward the complimentary.

But too many of us tend to interpret events, political figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white terms, blind to shades of gray.

A person can find Christine Blasey Ford credible, believe that Brett Kavanaugh lacks the temperament for the Supreme Court and also worry about a pile-on against him that laid waste to the concepts of due process and presumption of innocence. But the public battle lines were drawn in a way that left little room for that.

For that matter, a person can detest the conservative stacking of the court — and seethe over the manner in which Mitch McConnell blocked Merrick Garland — and accept that Trump, in elevating Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, didn’t commit some treachery or abuse his office. He fulfilled campaign pledges and reminded us that elections have consequences.