WASHINGTON — He drove them crazy. He berated them on the way to the White House and badgered them once they got there. He stood by them when he thought they were right and tore at their heels when he was convinced they were wrong.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the two men who thwarted McCain’s ambitions to become commander-in-chief, stood one after the other before the nation’s elite at Washington National Cathedral on Saturday to honor the man they beat, extolling him as a one-of-a-kind figure the likes of which will not be seen again anytime soon.
That they were asked, and not the current president, spoke volumes about the man and the moment. And while neither former president made explicit mention of President Donald Trump, who left the White House as the service began to go to his golf course in Virginia — uninvited and unwelcome at the funeral — their tributes to the senator could hardly be heard without the unspoken contrast to the current occupant of the Oval Office.
“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult, in phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Obama said. “It’s a politics that pretends to be brave, but in fact is born of fear. John called us to be bigger than that. He called us to be better than that.”
Bush praised McCain for his “courage and decency,” an exemplar of the grand American values of standing up for the oppressed and against bigotry. “John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder — we are better than this, America is better than this,” Bush said.
While Trump was absent, political figures from both parties made their way to the cathedral on a dreary, overcast and humid day in the capital. They came to bid farewell to John Sidney McCain III, son and grandson of admirals, naval aviator, tortured prisoner, congressman, six-term senator, two-time presidential candidate, patriot, maverick, reformer, warrior, curmudgeon, father, husband and finally, in death, American icon.
They also came to mourn an ideal that he represented and a town that he once dominated with verve and humor and memorable flashes of temper. Like McCain, many of the Republicans who attended have found themselves deeply discouraged by their own party’s president. But unlike McCain, most of them do not say so out loud, for fear of rage by Twitter or retribution by the base. It was almost as if it were a meeting of Washington’s political underground, if the underground met in a grand cathedral with 10,650 organ pipes.
Indeed, Meghan McCain, one of the senator’s daughters, offered a powerful, emotional remembrance that also seemed like a defiant cri de coeur against Trump. “He was a great man,” she said of her father, choking up and struggling to continue. “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness — the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege.”
In case anyone doubted who she had in mind, she later declared: “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.” The audience then burst out in applause, something that rarely happens during the great funerals held at the cathedral.
For his part, Trump spent the morning railing again on Twitter about his opponents, the news media and the investigation into his campaign’s interactions with Russia during the 2016 election.
He quoted supporters asserting that the investigation was rigged “to spy on Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s political opponent” (misspelling his predecessor’s name) and that “this is the scandal here — a police state.” He complained about “corruption at the DOJ & FBI” and said the news media “has become tainted and corrupt!”
On his way to the golf course he unleashed a few more combative tweets threatening to terminate a current trade agreement with Canada and warning that “Congress should not interfere w/these negotiations.”
Standing in for Trump at the cathedral were his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and national security adviser, John Bolton, seated not far away from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
McCain, who died last weekend at 81, directed his own farewell with the same contrarian spirit that flavored his political career. As he battled brain cancer, he told his advisers months ago that he wanted Bush and Obama to speak at his funeral, then called each of them to make the request. The point was to emphasize the common values that they shared despite their differences.
“That’s what McCain’s trying to say,” said Mark Salter, his longtime confidant. “The message of the whole service is supposed to be there’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to do politics than the way we’ve been doing it lately.”
Obama admitted to a “certain surprise” when McCain called to ask him to speak at his service, but said he came to realize it demonstrated the senator’s iconoclastic spirit, disdain for self-pity, largeness of spirit and mischievous streak.
“After all,” Obama said, “what better way to get a last laugh than to make George and I say nice things about him to a national audience?”
The former president recalled the time during their 2008 contest when McCain corrected a supporter who called Obama an Arab. “I was grateful, I wasn’t surprised,” Obama said. “I never saw John treat anyone differently because of their race, or religion, or gender.”
That did not mean they agreed all the time, he noted. “It’s no secret it’s been mentioned that he had a temper,” Obama said, “and when it flared up, it was a wonder to behold — his jaw grinding, his face reddening, his eyes boring a hole right through you. Not that I ever experienced this firsthand, mind you.”
But he said that every so often while he was president, McCain would come to the White House “just to sit and talk” about their disagreements. “We never doubted the other man’s sincerity or the other man’s patriotism, or that when all was said and done, we were on the same team,” Obama said.
Bush defeated McCain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 after an acrid primary campaign, and the two clashed regularly over the next eight years, perhaps most notably over the issue of torture. McCain forced Bush to accept legislation intended to bar the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.
But when the war in Iraq went badly and Bush was abandoned by virtually everyone, McCain stuck with him and supported a surge of troops and strategy shift that helped turn the war around.
“McCain, if he was not for you on something, would be straightforward and wouldn’t be for you,” said Karl Rove, the longtime adviser to Bush. “But if he was for you, like on the surge or immigration reform, he was for you. There were no permanent enemies when it came to his job as a legislator.”
Mark McKinnon, a media strategist who worked for both men, said they were more alike than either initially realized. “I think Bush saw McCain as a leather-tough but likable old bird — ornery and unyielding at times but always principled, which Bush respected,” he said. “And I think McCain saw Bush as down to earth and authentic, despite his background, which would make most phony and entitled.”
McCain recovered from his 2000 defeat to capture the party nomination in 2008 but he could not overcome the headwinds from the unpopular Iraq War. Long after his defeat at Obama’s hands, McCain was a sharp critic of the new president’s handling of foreign policy in places like Iraq, Syria and Russia.
“Obama always had tremendous respect for McCain, no doubt,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a longtime adviser to Obama. “They butted heads throughout the campaign and in the White House, worked together when they could, battled each other furiously when they couldn’t.”
The service capped days of public tributes following events in Arizona on Thursday and the U.S. Capitol the next day. McCain’s flag-draped coffin was taken by motorcade Saturday morning from Capitol Hill to the cathedral, stopping along the way at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where Cindy McCain lay a wreath in honor of her husband whose service during that war vaulted him to national prominence.
At the cathedral, the coffin was brought into the vast chamber and a bourdon bell tolled as the family entered. The service included touches from different parts of his life. The mourners sang the Navy Hymn and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” while the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club performed “Amazing Grace” and, with the Navy Band Brass Ensemble, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” All of them together with the Cathedral Choir later joined in “America the Beautiful.”
In addition to his daughter and the former presidents, McCain chose former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to speak. McCain said earlier this year that he wished he had picked Lieberman as his running mate in 2008 instead of Sarah Palin, who was not invited to Saturday’s service.
The senator’s son, Jimmy McCain, wearing his Marine uniform, read “Requiem,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, the same verses the senator used to end his most recent book — “here is the sailor, home from the sea.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Sidney McCain, the senator’s daughter, all read from Scripture. Renée Fleming performed “Danny Boy.”
The honorary pallbearers were a who’s who of the senator’s life and across-the-aisle friendships, including former Vice President Joe Biden, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, actor Warren Beatty and a bevy of current and former senators, advisers, fundraisers and friends. A prominent Russian dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was also included, underscoring the senator’s long-standing opposition to the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin.
The senator’s remains will be interred Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery, next to his lifelong friend and 1958 academy classmate, Adm. Charles R. Lawson.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.