The ruler's tragedy

I am sure Frank Johnson hasn't written anything interesting for 10 years but in last week's Spectator he said something rather profound. He started by pointing out that mixed in with the bad, Mussolini, Franco and Peron also managed to do some good. Then he said:

We often hear about Nazis to whom Argentina gave refuge, but not Jews. It is Politically Inconvenient. None of this is to deny that Mussolini, Franco and Perón were also bad. But ancient historians had no difficulty in grasping that bad rulers could also do good. To the ancients, many rulers, perhaps most, were both. The ancients wisely saw this as the ruler’s perennial condition; tragedy even. By comparison, modern historians have declined into infantilism.