McCain, in death, speaks to what’s lost
The nation’s long goodbye to John McCain has been replete with a sense of something lost, or at least being lost, that is larger than a war hero, senator and presidential contender. It’s epitomized by McCain’s choice of his once bitter opponents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, the two men who thwarted his loftiest ambition, to deliver his eulogies in Washington on Saturday.
Death is the ultimate uniter, but the politics President Trump embodies amplify our divisions to the point of immortality. Trump could hardly muster a mild gesture of posthumous respect for McCain, and he was pointedly excluded from his services, as he was from Barbara Bush’s.
If our tribal and individual jealousies can’t be humbled by the mortality we share with our fellow humans, there is precious little hope for the imaginative act of common cause with our fellow Americans. And that is an imperative McCain advocated eloquently even through the words of the rivals who survived him.
Josh Gohlke, editorial writer
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