The John McCain Funeral

Reporting on John McCain’s funeral, The Wall Street Journal noted that former presidents Bush and Obama had called McCain “a model of enduring American virtue.” McCain has been widely lauded for his patriotism, his sense of honor, dignity and decency. He was widely praised for his love of bipartisanship.

But then, how did it happen that his funeral, which he orchestrated, became defiled by Trump bashing? After all, McCain pointedly excluded the President of the United States from his funeral ceremonies. And then, speakers from Meghan McCain to Barack Obama to George W. Bush notably took up his invitation to trash Donald Trump.

Susan Glasser captured the tone for The New Yorker:

Donald Trump’s name was never mentioned. It didn’t have to be. The funeral service for John Sidney McCain III, at the Washington National Cathedral, on this swampy Saturday morning, was all about a rebuke to the pointedly uninvited current President of the United States, which was exactly how McCain had planned it.

Of course, there were fulsome tributes to Senator McCain’s bravery and courage and public service, stark reminders of the torture he endured as a prisoner of war, and of the policies he fought for (and against) in his many decades as a Republican politician from Arizona. But McCain knew that would not be the headline from the grand service, whose many details he personally oversaw. This was to be no mere laying to rest of a Washington wise man, nor just another funeral of an elder statesman whose passing would be marked by flowery words about the end of an era. It was a meeting of the Resistance, under vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows.

Glasser even notes that the Saturday morning was “swampy.” Clearly, the swamp used the McCain funeral to strike back. Those who took center stage had been repudiated by the election of Donald Trump.

And yet, it made McCain look petty and mean-spirited… as though he could not miss a last chance to play to the liberal media crowd.

And we must add that McCain also, and pointedly, excluded his chosen 2008 vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, along with Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt… officials from that campaign.

What message was that sending? After all, Palin rose to prominence because John McCain chose her to be his running mate. It was his first and most significant executive decision as presidential candidate. Why did he exclude her?

Barack Obama captured the mood, though in reverse, when he offered these thoughts:

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse seems small, mean, petty, trafficking in bombast and insults, phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Mr. Obama said before a host of current and former lawmakers and White House officials.

The funny part is that Obama really believes that he himself did not make a massive contribution to our toxic political environment. And, what else was he and the other speakers at John McCain’s funeral doing but being:

Small, mean, petty, trafficking in bombast and insults, phony controversies and manufactured outrage.

For a life of service and sacrifice, John McCain deserved better. He would have received better if not for the fact that he insisted on orchestrating his funeral… to settle scores and to poke a finger in the eye of the President of the United States.