McCain’s America ‘was always great’

At last open service, daughter rages ...

WASHINGTON — John McCain’s daughter and two former presidents led a public rebuke of President Trump’s divisive politics at the late senator’s memorial service yesterday in a call for a return to civility among the nation’s leaders.

The nearly three-hour service at the Washington National Cathedral was a remarkable show of defiance against a president McCain openly defied in life as the antithesis of the American spirit of service to something greater than any individual.

Standing near McCain’s flag-draped casket and with Trump’s daughter in the audience, Meghan McCain delivered a broadside against the uninvited president without mentioning his name.

“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 while he suffered and served,” she said, her voice first choking back tears. Then, it rose in anger.

“The America of John McCain,” she added, with a reference to Trump’s trademark phrase, “has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

The audience of Washington power players erupted in applause.

Trump has dismissed the idea that McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was a hero. The president made clear he resented McCain’s thumbs-down vote last year that sank the Republican attempt to repeal national health care. And he only marked McCain’s passing on Aug. 25 with traditional presidential actions after he came under fire from the American Legion.

Trump chose to head to his Virginia golf course during yesterday’s service and tweeted his grievances against the FBI and NAFTA throughout the day. In one missive, he misspelled former President Barack Obama’s first name. He sent Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, Defense Secretary James Mattis and others to the service to represent the administration.

McCain asked Obama, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican, to speak at his memorial service and they gave personal testimony that overcoming rivalries and partisan politics was not only possible but good for the country. Both men had denied McCain’s presidential aspirations. But they spoke of reconciling with him during personal moments afterward, and, as Bush said, “the rivalry melted away.”

In separate eulogies, Obama and Bush also delivered pushback to Trump that was more subtle than Meghan McCain’s but unmistakable nonetheless.

Bush said one of the great gifts in his life was becoming friends with his former White House rival. He said they would in later years recall their political battles like former football players remembering the big game.

The service was the last public event in Washington, where McCain lived and worked over four decades, and part of McCain’s fiveday, cross-country funeral procession. He died Aug. 25 at age 81.

McCain is to be buried today at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, next to his best friend from the Class of 1958, Adm. Chuck Larson.

IN HIS HONOR: Above left, from left, former President George W. Bush, former first lady Laura Bush, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, bow their heads in prayer at a memorial service for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at Washington National Cathedral yesterday. McCain’s widow, Cindy, follows his casket, top left, and lays a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, above right.

AP PHOTOS ‘AMERICAN GREATNESS’: Meghan McCain, above, speaks at a memorial service for her father, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., yesterday. McCain died Aug. 25 from brain cancer at age 81.