I tend to disagree that this is "rationalizing," if by this you mean self-deception. One of the great themes of GFI-III which Puzo & FFC want to communicate to the audience is precisely this point that the line between the legitimate world of business and politics, on the one hand, and the world of organized crime, on the other, is hazy at best. A good example is the parallel imagery that Puzo and FFC give us between the Commission meeting in GFI and the meeting in Cuba in GFII. The long wooden table decked out with fruit filled bowls, the way the camera moves from attendee to attendee accompanied by introductions, is identical in both cases, and the implicit conclusion we are meant to draw from this parallel is that these two worlds are more alike than we might be comfortable admitting. (In GFI it's all Mafia heads at the table, in GFII you have a couple of Mafia heads along with the representatives of large, "legitimate" corporations. A less striking but essentially similar parallel comes in GFIII during the Vatican meeting.) There is also the crucial statement Michael makes in GFIII, that all his life he wanted to climb the ladder of legitimate business, but that the higher up he goes in the legitimate world, the more crooked he discovers it to be. This is an expression of a clear assessment of the circumstances based on first-hand experience, not a rationalization. Another good example is Michael's remark to Kay in GFI that she is the one who is naive in thinking that senators and presidents don't have men killed in the same way and for the same reasons that a man like Vito does.