Joe Lieberman, one of Sen. John McCain’s closest friends, reflected Saturday on how the longtime senator had imparted one “last great gift” to the country this week: bringing people together to celebrate his life and the values he tried to live by.
“The greater cause to which he devoted his life was America, not so much the country defined by its borders, but the America of our founding values: freedom, human rights, opportunity, democracy and equal justice under law,” Lieberman, himself a former Democrat-turned-independent senator from Connecticut, said during his address at McCain’s funeral Saturday at the Washington National Cathedral.
“In John’s life, he nobly served and advanced these American values and, remarkably, his death seems to have reminded the American people that these values are what makes us a great nation, not the tribal partisanship and personal attack politics that have recently characterized our life,” Lieberman continued. “This week’s celebration of the life and values and patriotism of this hero, I think you have taken our country above all that. In a way, it’s the last great gift that John McCain gave America.”
Lieberman, who first met McCain in the early 1990s, recalled how the unlikely duo bonded over their opposition to the Bosnian War. He remembered Saturday several overseas trips he took with the Arizona Republican and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., affectionately known to their Senate colleagues as “the three amigos.”
McCain had “pervasive curiosity” and “loved to laugh,” Lieberman said of his old friend, describing their time together as “one of the great blessings” of his life.
Lieberman encouraged mourners Saturday to champion a return to the values of the nation’s founders because it would help make “America the better country John always knew it could be.”
“And I want to suggest today that we can give a last great gift to him, which is to nurture these values,” he added. “And take them forward into the years ahead to make America the better country John always knew it could be. I pray that we will. And I ask you to do so as well.”
McCain revealed earlier in 2018 in his last memoir, The Restless Wave, that he regretted not being able to choose Lieberman as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.
McCain, who died last Saturday at the age of 81 from brain cancer, will be buried Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
