Remembering McCain.
Former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart will be pallbearer at funeral
Former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart was a guest of honor at Sen. John McCain’s wedding in 1980, though the two men served different political parties. This weekend, he’ll be a pallbearer at his friend’s funeral.
“When he asked me to do it, I did something pretty rare for myself: I broke into tears,” Hart told The Denver Post on Monday. “First of all, it was facing his death — and it was such an honor.”
McCain died Saturday after suffering with brain cancer.
His political career intersected with Hart’s in 1977, soon after Coloradans elected Hart to the Senate. At the time, McCain was a U.S. Navy liaison officer, having been released from a prison camp in North Vietnam just a few years earlier.
Hart was “awestruck” to meet McCain, who already was a national heroic figure. “I was honored to meet him. I had no idea we’d have this friendship,” Hart said.
The two made several trips together, including to aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean. Hart thinks McCain was “sizing up” the idea of a political career during those early years. McCain later helped Hart to become an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, while McCain himself was elected congressman in Arizona in 1982, and then U.S. senator in 1986.
The two remained friends for life. They shared memories of years when partisan rancor was far less common, said Hart, a Democrat.
“He thought that it was so much better in the early days, the ’70s and ’80s, than it was today,” he said. “It’s so much more tribal, partisan, bitter, angry. I think it was a total turnoff for him that it had to be that way, and I think his last few appearances at the floor of the Senate indicated that.”
Hart is angry, too, at President Donald Trump’s treatment of McCain, including his 2015 comment that he likes “people who weren’t captured,” as well as the White House’s perceived delay in ordering flags lowered.
“It is the mark of a coward that he seeks to bring anyone above him down to his level. He cannot stand to see anyone respected when he himself is not respected and does not respect the high office that he holds. One has only to look at those around that man to know why he could not acknowledge John McCain’s patriotism, service and honors,” Hart wrote of Trump in a tribute to McCain.
Hart acknowledged that his friend was being “lionized,” perhaps to excess, and he pointed to McCain’s candor, integrity and humor as the marks of a genuine person.
“He emerged from prison with broken bones badly set, walked with a limp, and saluted awkwardly. Those were marks of distinction and honor,” Hart wrote in his tribute.” Despite his afflictions, he laughed often and saw humor in the ridiculousness of the human folly we call politics.”
Hart has not been to the nation’s capital since Trump’s inauguration. “This’ll be my first time back,” he said of McCain’s funeral.