Barack Obama and George W Bush have paid an emotional tribute to former political foe Senator John McCain at his memorial service in Washington’s National Cathedral.
Senator McCain, who became one of America’s most high-profile politicians, died a week ago from brain cancer at the age of 81. His daughter Meghan spoke ahead of the former presidents, saying her father’s death was ‘the passing of American greatness’, and encouraged others to live up to her father’s example.
In her tearful yet powerful tribute, she said they ‘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: ‘The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.’ Mr Obama told the congregation: ‘We come to celebrate an extraordinary man, a warrior, a statesman, a patriot who embodied so much that is best in America.’ Calling the senator a conservative politician, said ‘he did understand that some principles transcend politics, that some values transcend party’.
Mr Obama praised Mr McCain for opposing ‘bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy’ and as a proponent of a ‘free and independent press’. Speaking after former president George W. Bush, Mr Obama said of Mr McCain: ‘He made us better presidents.’
Mr McCain will be buried on Sunday at his alma mater, the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
