My condolences to his family. I appreciated how strongly he came out against the Iraq War. Unfortunately I also was waiting for the ceiling to collapse on his back room dealings.

Here's what I wonder: Would I have admired the man at all if he had not turned on the war? Would I even have known of him? There was something about the Bush years that felt so very divisive to me, so tribal. People moved in and out of my approval camp depending on their political pronouncements du jour. Someone like John McCain was a roller coaster, and I think I remember Murtha the same way--kind of a hawk (bad!) but then a dove (good!). I don't like to imagine that my thinking was ever so simplistic, but there you have it.

Lainey,

Not only that, but as Saturn Smith notes, Murtha really was an old-time backroom, kickback, yes corrupt politician. If he hadn't turned on the war in such a public way, he would have died an emblem of some of the more unsavory elements of the Washington establishment.

Maybe it's OK that he got just that one thing right. Maybe that counts as a Good Life, someone who mucked around and did lots of different, even contradictory, things but, in terms of influence, amounted to the one biggie. Consistency being a hobgoblin and all that...

Well, logical consistency is a hobgoblin. I'm not sure we can say the same thing about moral consistency.