John McCain and President Donald Trump are not done with one another yet.
Days of mourning for the Arizona senator, including a lying-in-state in the Capitol Rotunda and the pomp of a service in Washington’s National Cathedral, are certain to become about more than simply honoring a singular political leader and national hero.
In Washington, even death is political a fact McCain well understood as a sought-after eulogizer himself, and by planning his funeral rites to exclude the President, he will be making an unmistakable posthumous statement directed at the White House.
Tributes for McCain and the lauding of his courage, honor, decency, character, and readiness to reexamine his own mistakes will unfold at a time when Trump is facing an unflattering public debate about his own personality and behavior. The guilty plea by the President’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and conviction of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort last week deepened the political and legal storm raging around the White House — but still did not push most Republican leaders to criticize Trump.
In that context, the ceremonies marking McCain’s passing seem sure to become more than a lament for a departed political giant. They are likely to become a debate about political morality and the comportment and principles expected of public figures in an already polarized political age that has been further roiled by Trump’s disruptive influence.
After two losing presidential campaigns, McCain never made it to the Oval Office — yet he is getting an emotional sendoff and assessment that might befit one of the men who did become President.
McCain chose Barack Obama and George W. Bush — the two men who kept him from the White House — to eulogize him and didn’t want the President to attend his funeral. If those plans hold, McCain will be sending a clear final message to Trump, after making clear when he was alive that he saw the President’s demeanor, populist style and global outlook as antithetical to America’s founding values and global role.
The antipathy between the Arizona senator and the President has not been stilled by his death on Saturday from brain cancer.
In normal circumstances, a President could be expected to issue a fulsome written statement to mark the passing of such an important political figure. Trump simply wrote a tweet, and while members of his immediate family praised McCain’s character and contribution, he did not.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Trump decided against issuing a statement praising McCain’s Senate career and military service as a Vietnam prisoner of war. The paper said that press secretary Sarah Sanders and White House chief of staff John Kelly advocated calling the Arizona senator a “hero.”
“My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
McCain’s service at the National Cathedral may well become the biggest meeting of the political establishment and visiting global elites so far seen during the Trump presidency. The President’s absence and failure to lead a grateful nation in mourning would, for McCain, eloquently reflect the fracture with the traditional ruling classes that he successfully made the focus of his 2016 campaign and that has become a motif of his presidency.
But Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime speechwriter and confidant, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie Monday that the senator’s circle did not want the week to become all about the President.
“I’m going to try very hard not to think or talk about Donald Trump for this week and just do what I can to help make sure John is buried with the honors and decorum he’s earned from years of faithful service to this country,” Salter said.
Not being invited to preside over a great national occasion will surely sting for a man like Trump, who relishes the theatrics of the presidency. Still, there might be a political upside, since some of his devoted base voters viewed McCain as a political relic, especially following the President’s frequent attacks on the Arizona senator.
Putting the debate about Trump’s behavior aside, the gathering of establishment clans may also serve as an epitaph not just for McCain, but for the brand of conservatism that he favored. McCain, a Cold Warrior, was a disciple of President Ronald Reagan and adopted the later neoconservative assertiveness of the George W. Bush years.
Trump, by contrast, has cozied up to Vladimir Putin, the former KGB man who is seeking to revive some of Russia’s Soviet-era influence. The President has hammered Western institutions like NATO and the European Union that helped win the Cold War, he decries the Middle East conflicts that McCain advocated, and he believes the global trading system is rigged against the United States.
Weeks before a midterm elections, and with the next presidential race already stirring, remembrances of McCain will showcase the kind of values and policies that the Republican icon shared with his establishment contemporaries.
But given that the current President’s ideas on issues like trade and the use of US power abroad are also reflected in the grass roots of Democratic politics, there’s a case to be made that it is Trump, and not the congregation in the National Cathedral that will include many former politicians who have the luxury of not worrying about public opinion, who best reflects the current sentiment among voters.
Tributes paid to McCain in the United States by every significant political figure — bar one, the President — and by foreign leaders highlighted his character, his courage, his willingness to find common ground across the political aisle, and above all his desire to serve a cause greater than himself. All of those themes are likely to dominate the next few days as McCain’s funeral observances unfold.
Source – BBC
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