What we need now is a really good loser

Our quadrennial exercise in democracy is over.

All over, that is, but the shouting — and I expect there will be no shortage of that in coming weeks (months? years?).

As I write this, I don’t know who won Tuesday’s election. Whether Donald Trump will continue to be our president for another four years or whether we will begin a new day with Joe Biden at the lead.

But as we await the result of this campaign, it seems worth remembering the late Sen. John McCain. Specifically, remembering McCain’s words on Nov. 4, 2008, the night he learned that he would never be president.

McCain, no doubt, was sorely disappointed, heartbroken, even, to be spurned in his second and final run for the nation’s highest office.

But he never took it out on the country. Instead, he said exactly what we needed to hear.

Then ... and now.

“My friends, we have come to the end of a long journey,” he told supporters who gathered that night at the Arizona Biltmore. “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama, to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

“In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

“This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight …”

McCain, in defeat, exuded grace as he called upon his supporters to get behind the man who beat him.

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

“Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.”

McCain didn’t make excuses and he didn’t point fingers, didn’t assign blame to the media or to Hollywood or to anyone other than himself. Instead,

he did what every good loser must do. He pointed the way forward.

“It is natural tonight to feel some disappointment, but tomorrow we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again …”

“This campaign was and will remain the great honor of my life, and my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude for the experience and to the American people for giving me a fair hearing before deciding that Senator Obama and my old friend Senator Joe Biden should have the honor of leading us for the next four years.”

McCain has been gone for two years, but his high-minded words on that November night bear repeating 12 years later in a country so deeply divided.

I imagine McCain would be horrified at the threat hanging over America at this moment, that violence would ever, could ever, be a response to democracy.

That anything other than a peaceful transfer of power or a peaceful continuation of power would even be possible. Here, in America.

“Today, I was a candidate for the highest office in the country I love so much. And tonight, I remain her servant. That is blessing enough for anyone and I thank the people of Arizona for it.

“Tonight — tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama, I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.

“And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America ...”

Our current president may not like losers but there is an art to losing well, one that can both define who you are and remind the rest of us who we are ...

Or who we are supposed to be.