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Clergy extend their hands in blessing over the casket of Sen. John McCain, who died a week ago at 81 of brain cancer, at Saturday’s memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington. The Rev. Edward A. Reese, S.J. (second from right), who delivered the service’s homily, was an educator at the Jesuit high school in Phoenix that McCain’s sons attended.
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Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan, a co-host of the ABC DIS, +0.09% talk show “The View,” fights back tears as she speaks of her father, whose instruction, she has said, was that she display her toughness in the eulogy. In a reference to the political slogan of President Donald Trump, of whom John McCain was a frequent intraparty critic, Meghan McCain said her father’s America had no need to be made great again, as his America has never been anything but great. Applause rang through the cathedral in response to that remark.
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Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a longtime McCain friend, drew a laugh when he suggested in his tribute that McCain would be amused that the service was on a Saturday and thus that Lieberman, as an observant member of the Jewish faith, would be required to walk to the cathedral. Former McCain campaign coordinator Steve Schmidt recalled on MSNBC early Saturday that McCain had planned to select Lieberman, a Democrat, as his running mate in 2008, viewing a bipartisan ticket as just what the country needed. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin instead got the nod.
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Barack Obama, who won his first term as president in 2008 over the McCain-Palin ticket, said that, while he and McCain didn’t advertise the fact, the two met frequently at the White House for one-on-one conversations to discuss policy and family and the direction of the country’s politics. Said Obama of McCain and himself: “We never doubted we were on the same team.”
McCain campaign aide Steve Schmidt said Saturday that, while McCain desperately wanted to beat Obama and to be president, he found Obama worthy of the presidency, just, in November 2008, not yet ready.
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McCain also personally selected George W. Bush, to whom he lost the Republican presidential nomination in a particularly hard-fought primary battle in 2000, to speak at his memorial service. Bush agreed with Obama in noting that even sitting presidents were not spared McCain’s signature “straight talk.”
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A third former president, Bill Clinton, stands beside his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at whose left stand former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney.
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Actor and film director Warren Beatty, a McCain friend and activist for liberal causes, exits the cathedral. Beatty was one of several notables McCain selected to serve as pallbearers.
Alongside the list of those whom McCain asked to speak and read at the service, the roster of pallbearers was widely perceived as a final message of nonpartisanship: Joe Biden, the former senator and Obama’s vice president; former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat; former senators Gary Hart, Russ Feingold and Phil Gramm; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; former Defense Secretary William Cohen, a Republican who served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet; Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza; and several campaign aides, business executives and others.
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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was in attendance.
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McCain’s 106-year-old mother, Roberta, was in attendance not only Saturday at the National Cathedral but at other memorial events through the week.
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Cindy McCain, the senator’s widow, follows the casket down the stairs of the cathedral after the service. Following a full calendar of public events throughout the week after John McCain’s death last Saturday, his body is to be laid to rest Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. McCain graduated from the academy in 1958.
