“Policies”, no, he’s speaking in a broad sense. The Uchiha comes up separately pages later. He’s saying Tobirama’s decisions are short sighted and bad.
No. He is including the uchiha decision there. That is the crux of his accusations against lord 2nd. That is why he later expands on it specifically. And also mentions jutsu. Which is basically Edo tensei that's been used as an evil tool by Orochimaru and Kabuto(hiruzen's fault).
So ONE of his many policies was bad in the longterm due to the incompetence and gross malpractice from his successor. He still has a shit ton good policies like
- Created the Chuunin exams
- Made ANBU
- Invented shadow clone Jutsu
- Established Uchiha police force
- Invented FTG
- Invented Edo Tensei
- Experimented on and uncovered how/why the sharingan forms
All within a relatively short tenure as Hokage. Probably less than 10 years.
And ONE of his Jutsu was misused. Even though it was classified as forbidden.
But the other two jutsu he created were basically used to fix that. Two literal Hokage are Hokage BECAUSE of his jutsu lol.
And, it should have been the Professor's duty to check his predecessors policies and change them if need be. That didn't happen did it?
Hiruzen was comfortable with keeping the status quo. But not following his predecessors in dealing with all the problems of the village, good or bad.
It is that decision by hiruzen, that decision to delegate the dirty work to Danzo, that ultimately exacerbated the Uchiha situation.
Danzo messed around with the Uchiha too much. Making them lose trust completely. And in the event of the 9 tails attack, it was Danzo who ordered the Uchiha do nothing against the 9 tails. Which completely extinguished any last bits of goodwill the Uchiha clan had with the rest of the village.
These events are what ultimately leads to the coup de tat attempt and the subsequent Uchiha massacre.
So, you can blame Tobirama all you want. But the one who didn't do ANYTHING to stop this, and the one who made everything worse and worse and allowed it to continue becoming worse until it reached the breaking point was, 4th hokage Professor Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Do you want a Hokage who makes bad decisions or who doesn’t have the Will to make the hard decisions? They’re both bad in different ways but Hiruzen was Hokage for much longer through more difficult times
I would choose Tobirama 10 out of 10 times.
The only mistake he made was making Hiruzen his successor.
We simply have no context on Hiruzen's roll in these much longer difficult times. I can easily believe that he wasn't the only one who could have pulled through. In fact, i'd say literally any other Hokage (maybe minus Tsunade) would have done better in the time Hiruzen served.
They certainly would not have appointed a back stabbing conniving jealous piece of shit like Danzo as a newly created roll of shadow hokage. And they would have had the guts to end Orochimaru the first time they discovered his experiments. Or they could have even prevented Orochimaru from ever going down that path.