Former Vice President Joe Biden paid homage to the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Thursday, calling him a “brother” who touched the lives of people around the world and lived his life with honor, courage, character, and integrity.
“My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain,” Biden said in the opening of his speech about McCain.
The former vice president delivered his tribute to McCain, who died Saturday after a yearlong battle with brain cancer, during a memorial service at the North Phoenix Baptist Church on the second of what will be five days of events honoring McCain.
Referring to he and McCain as “cockeyed optimists,” Biden detailed his decadeslong relationship with the Arizona senator, which started when McCain became the Navy liaison to the Senate and continued into their tenure serving as senators alongside each other.
“The way I look at it, the way I thought about it was that I always thought of John as a brother,” Biden said. “We had a hell of a lot of family fights. We go a long way.”
Reminiscing about his time working alongside McCain in the Senate, Biden said that despite their political differences, they harbored the same hopes and goals.
“We were both full of dreams and ambitions, and an overwhelming desire to make the time we had there worthwhile, to try to do the right thing, to think about how much we could make things better for the country we loved so much,” Biden said.
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The former vice president said he “trusted John with my life,” and lauded McCain’s commitment to a code of honor, courage, character, integrity, and duty.
“It wasn’t about politics with John. He could disagree on substance, but it was the underlying values that animated everything John did, everything he was, could come to a different conclusion,” Biden said. “He’d part company with you if you lacked the basic values of decency, respect, knowing that this project is bigger than yourself. John’s story is the American story. That’s not hyperbole. It’s the American story.”
Biden lamented the current political environment, noting the continued attacks lobbed by both parties on their motives rather than the substance of arguments, and recalled that on McCain’s last day in the Senate, he fought to restore “regular order, to start to treat one another again like we used to.”
“John was a hero. His character, courage, honor, integrity, but I think the thing that’s understated the most is his optimism,” the former vice president said. “That’s what made John special, made John a giant among all of us.”
Biden said he had reflected on the country’s reaction to McCain’s death, and attributed the overwhelming response to the American people’s knowledge of McCain’s belief and passion “in the soul of America.”
“His faith in the core values of this nation made them somehow feel it more genuinely themselves. His conviction that we as a country would never walk away from the sacrifices generations of Americans have made to defend liberty and freedom and human dignity around the word, it made average Americans proud of themselves and their country,” he said. “His belief, and it was deep, that Americans can do anything, withstand anything, achieve anything, it was both unflagging and ultimately reassuring that this man believed that so strongly.”
Biden offered words of advice to McCain’s family and noted that the world is joining them in mourning McCain’s death.
“There’s nothing anyone can say or do to ease the pain right now,” he said. “But I pray, I pray you take some comfort knowing that because you shared John with all of us your whole life, the world now shares with you the ache of John’s death.”
