The NPR Politics Podcast - John McCain Honored By Obama, Bush, & Others At Washington Funeral

Episode Date: September 1, 2018

Friends, family and former political rivals saluted the late Sen. John McCain on Saturday as a loving father, a fierce but forgiving political brawler, and a champion of American values around the world. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, and White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Lynn in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I just got done dropping off my son for his very first day of kindergarten. This podcast was recorded at 2.41 Eastern on Saturday, September 1st. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's been a week of memorial services for Senator John McCain, first in Arizona, then the U.S. Capitol. Today, leaders from around the country gathered at the National Cathedral,

the site of so many big memorial services, to say goodbye to John McCain. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horslake. I cover the White House. So we all just watched this funeral. It was about two and a half hours. Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton were there. A ton of other dignitaries.

Scott Horsley, you and I were here in studio in NPR. But Kelsey, you were at the National Cathedral. Just tell us what it was like to be there. It's really solemn. It was very quiet around the cathedral. It is in part of upper northwest washington dc that is already kind of a quiet part of of the city the cathedral itself is at the top of a hill and it's very isolated and it felt like it was just a quiet solemn moment and it's just an enormous building and it's the closest that the country has to a westminster abbey national place for big events. We don't do

royal weddings there, but we do go there to honor the lives of people like John McCain. You have prayer services following the inauguration of several presidents, including Obama. And it was the site of the National Prayer Service for Ronald Reagan after his passing. Sort of the official religious home for official Washington. So we're going to walk through some of the key moments from this funeral in a moment. But Scott, I think one of the key moments was when they went to the Vietnam Memorial on the way to the National Cathedral. Absolutely. And you have to remember that this entire pageant that

we have witnessed over the last week since John McCain's death on the 25th, has been carefully planned out to sort of illustrate the various stations of John McCain's life. His adopted home in Arizona, his church in Arizona, the Capitol here where he lay in state. And then, obviously, the formal stop en route to the cathedral this morning, where the motorcade paused at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Cindy McCain placed a ceremonial wreath there, and obviously a nod not only to John McCain's own time as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, which is a central piece of the narrative of John McCain, but also a tribute to the tens of thousands who served and died there. And that's particularly important because McCain was central to the normalizing of relationships

between the United States and Vietnam. And it's something that he thought was very important, was that the country needed to remember the war, but they also needed to move on. And even though the McCain family had said they didn't want President Trump at today's funeral or any of the events this week, when Cindy McCain went and laid that wreath, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was next to her, as was Chief of Staff John Kelly. The two of them have had a long relationship with McCain, and part of his job in Congress

was to work directly with them. So for them, it was more than just their role in this White House. It was about their relationship between the military and John McCain. I can't think of another person in Congress who has a deeper and more involved relationship with the military. It's funny, though, of course, those are both generals. And we heard yesterday from Vice President Mike Pence, whose son, of course, is a Marine. No one was kinder to the enlisted men and women of the U.S. military, and no one was tougher on the generals and admirals. And we heard similar points during the service today. So let's get to the funeral.

The National Cathedral is jam-packed with former president, former senators, celebrities. At one point, there was a cutaway shot to John Kerry sitting next to Jay Leno. And looking through the list, it struck me that if you include McCain, everyone who lost a general presidential election in the last 20 years was there. Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole, McCain, Kerry, Al Gore. But I think Meghan McCain really set the tone for the whole day with her eulogy early on. John McCain's daughter, she's co-host of The View on ABC. She talked about a lot of personal things. She talked about his public career,

but also talking about just his role as a dad and moments she shared with him as a dad and conversations she had like this one. When my father got sick, and I asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy. He said, show them how tough you are. And I guess she proceeded to do that because after all of these personal stories, she made some pointed comments that it was pretty clear,

even though she never said President Trump, who they were directed at. The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She is resourceful and confident and secure. She meets her responsibilities. She speaks quietly because she is strong. America does not boast because she has no need to. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.

I think it's really interesting that the applause starts out kind of faint, but then people kind of testing the water. She's the first person to speak, and this has just gotten very political. And then the applause really grew. It's one of the bigger applause lines I think we saw throughout the entire service. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of laughs at some of the jokes and funny stories that we're going to hear later. But that was definitely a moment that, you know, and I was wondering what people like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the audience thought.

But there was a lot of applause for that. There was one other moment from Meghan McCain's speech that we should listen to. And it was a mix of those two themes we're talking about, because she was talking about her personal relationship with her dad, but then also contrasting him with with the way that politics has devolved into personal insult politics. He was a great man. 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 live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.

There we hear Meghan McCain making a veiled reference to the fact that President Trump received a number of deferments to avoid going to Vietnam. Some were related to him being in school and there was also a was saying pointedly there, but that other speakers talked about as well, was the idea that John McCain was clearly a partisan person. He had a point of view. He liked to pick fights, and he did so regularly with Obama and Bush, and they both noted that. But it wasn't it wasn't a petty lowest common denominator insult, just just just trying to tear people down in a way that that a lot of politics seems to be right now. But I also think the partisanship that was kind of a repeated target throughout the service today is bigger than just Donald Trump. It was sort of there was a lot of bemoaning of the the pettiness that has infected our politics, going back farther than the current presidential administration. And there were appeals to the ability that John McCain showed to, yes, to be a partisan brawler at times, but also to work across the aisle on issues such as immigration reform, on issues such as campaign finance reform. And there were tributes to that from both of the men who beat John McCain in his efforts to win the White House,

former President George W. Bush and former President Obama. Yeah, and they both were pretty candid at the top of their eulogies, saying that they had had pretty nasty battles with them. The 2000 Republican primary was pretty tough. The 2008 general election was pretty tough. And they both joked about it. Bush said that McCain could be a pain in his side, but over the years they'd talked and they would go over those old campaigns like he compared it to football players going over a big game. Moments before my last debate ever

with Senator John Kerry in Phoenix, I was trying to gather some thoughts in the holding room. That sounds very relaxing. Yeah, it's a good story. So a lot of the speeches were like that. I mean, Joe Lieberman had all these stories about traveling with McCain in other countries and just kind of ridiculous moments they found themselves in. But speakers like Bush always kept getting back to this idea that McCain had this code he lived by. Bush talked about it kind of like he was like a Western character. John was above all a man with a code. He lived by a set of public virtues that brought strength and purpose to his life

and to his country. He was courageous, with a courage that frightened his captors and inspired his countrymen. He was honest, no matter whom it offended. Presidents were not spared. He was honorable, always recognizing that his opponents were still patriots and human beings. He loved freedom with the passion of a man who knew its absence. He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators. Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power. Obviously, John McCain had been himself a victim of torture as a POW,

and one of the things he and George W. Bush tangled over was the torture or enhanced interrogation tactics that were used by the United States in the wake of 9-11. Former President Bush alluded to those disagreements they had, but he said, you know, he wanted me to be better. He wanted America to be better. Yeah. And before we listen to Obama, I totally missed this when this happened. Did one of you, did either of you catch this like cough drop moment in the front row? And can we explain what went down?

It seems like maybe Michelle Obama had like a tickle in her throat or was coughing or something. And then there was this little flurry of activity. And Laura Bush handed George W. Bush something. And then he passed it over to Michelle. And some people thought they were passing notes or something. It turns out it was candy or a cough drop or something. The Bush is coming through with a cough drop in the purse. It was a very sweet little moment. I was curious to hear what Obama would have to say,

because we just don't hear that much from Barack Obama these days. He, aside from Facebook posts, has not waded directly into current politics that much. And given the tone of the week services of these subtle and not so subtle rebukes to President Trump, I was really curious to hear what Obama had to say. And I think I'd say by and large, the bulk of his speech was these themes we talked about before. McCain is a statesman. McCain is somebody who tangled but tried to be honorable about it. The most important thing I think Obama said was that when he and John McCain would fight on policy, he said, we knew we were on the same team. Yeah, we didn't. We questioned each other's views. We questioned each other's policies.

But we didn't question each other's patriotism or sincerity. We respected that we were both trying to preserve what we thought was a vision of America. And former President Obama let us in on what I think has been a closely guarded secret until now, which is that while he was in the office, McCain would occasionally make unannounced visits and they would spend time together just talking out of the spotlight, talking about family, talking about politics, talking about their respective visions for the country. And disagreeing. And Obama said that he was fine with that because they disagreed very passionately and thought that was a good thing to talk about the areas where they disagreed and to still keep talking. Obama also made reference to something that happened in the 2008 campaign. And we've seen a lot of reference to this during the course of the week as we've been remembering John McCain. That was a moment during that campaign when John McCain confronted one of his own supporters who had falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not American. That video clip has been shown

repeatedly this week. And Barack Obama said at the time he appreciated it, but he was not surprised. And he thought that in doing that, John McCain was not only defending his honor, Obama's honor, but also America's honor and the way that campaigns ought to be conducted. Isn't that the spirit we celebrate this week? That striving to be better, to do better, to be worthy of the great inheritance that our founders bestowed?

So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking and bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It's a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that. And we heard a lot of that during the service today, not only from Obama and Bush, but from other speakers as well, who said that one of the reasons we've seen such an outpouring of emotion during this last week surrounding John McCain is that I think a lot of Americans

do hunger for some sense that we are better than our current politics. And there was a wish from Joe Lieberman, the former Connecticut senator, who was almost John McCain's running mate in 2008, even though he had been a Democrat turned independent, who said in his death, John McCain has really given Americans kind of a reminder of who we have the potential to be. I will say, I'll be the downer here on this a little bit, is that this is the kind of sentiment that we hear a lot when there's been a tragedy or a loss in Washington. There's this talk about coming together. We saw it happen after the baseball shooting where Congressman Steve Scalise was shot just a little over a year ago. And as much as people in Washington, I think, would like there to be the space for that to

happen, it just hasn't really happened. And things have, if anything, after the shooting, we've seen one of the most bitter shooting, we've seen one of the most bitter political years we've seen in a long time. Whether or not McCain is of a greater stature and will have more weight on that, that's another question altogether. This was the last public ceremony yesterday. John McCain became just the 31st American to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Scott, can you fill us in on the last part of these ceremonies? What happens next? John McCain is going to be buried on Sunday on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy,

where, of course, he was a cadet, and he racked up a lot of demerits while he was there. He was a rebellious cadet. And of course, both his father and grandfather were highly decorated Navy admirals. He has said in the past that he hated his time at the Naval Academy, but some of his great old friends have been laid to rest there. And that's where he chose to be buried. So we're going to end with this. We've obviously talked a lot about John McCain this week, and we're going to end playing a clip that we played earlier this year when it first came out. And this was a clip from the afterward of the last book that McCain wrote that came out. He wrote it knowing he was dying.

And this afterward was kind of recorded as a goodbye message from John McCain, who knew he wasn't going to return to the Senate or return to public life or speak through anything through statements. So we're going to return to the Senate or return to public life or speak through anything through statements. So we're going to listen to part of that again. I had the great good fortune to spend 60 years in the employ of our country, defending our country's security, advancing our country's ideals, supporting our country's indispensable contribution to the progress of humanity. It's not been perfect service, to be sure. And there were times when the country might have benefited

from a little less of my help. But I've tried to deserve the privilege, and I've been repaid a thousand times over with adventure and discoveries, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a big player in the story of America and the history we made.

And I am so very grateful. That was John McCain reading from his last book, The Restless Wave. McCain was a statesman, a war hero, a United States senator. He died last week at the age of 81. He was honored today at the National Cathedral. Tomorrow, he'll be buried in Annapolis. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horslake. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Asculta in praga me, Fondus et sanctum.