Posthumous reputations are seldom unequivocally fair. Some take an embarrassment of achievements to the grave and are then recognised for a single contribution to posterity (Nicolaus Copernicus enriched our understanding of the cosmos in uncountable ways, but is remembered solely for the heliocentric model of the solar system); others achieve next to nothing but enjoy eternal recognition for a single act (in some cases a single act they didn’t even carry out: Amerigo Vespucci — the obscure navigator after whom, by many accounts due to a blunder by an early cartographer, the most powerful nation in the world is named — springs to mind).
Still more have manifold achievements overshadowed by a single transgression or foible: during Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House, 1,700 Soviet nuclear warheads were dismantled while America reached its lowest poverty
