> encouraged a tremendous amount of public debate

I don't think "debate" is the right word for what happened in that thread.

> then single-handedly reverted Isaac Childers' commit

A perfectly good reason for reverting the commit was provided in the message itself: "All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert." It looks like the patch didn't meet that criteria. He also cited other valid reasons for rejecting it: "have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc."

Is this change so overwhelmingly important and urgent that it overrides the aforementioned policy and concerns? I don't know.

Does the fact he rejected the patch excuse the way people reacted to his decision? No.