President Joe Biden delivered his first presidential eulogy Wednesday for Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner’s funeral, memorializing the life of the Marine Corps veteran, former Navy secretary, and five-term U.S. senator as “a reminder of what we can do when we come together as one nation.”
“While we represented different political parties, I can say, without hesitation, that John was a man of conscience, character, and honor,” Biden opened while speaking during the ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral.
The president said Warner was a “member of the greatest generation … understood that democracy is more than a form of government.”
“Democracy is a way of being. He understood it begins and grows in an open heart and with a willingness to work across the aisle and come together in common cause,” Biden said. “That empathy is the fuel of democracy. The willingness to see each other as opponents, not as enemies. Above all, to see each other as fellow Americans.”
“In the battle for the soul of America today, John Warner is a reminder of what we can do when we come together as one nation,” he said. “John’s life is a reminder that every generation, every generation, has opened the door of opportunity a little bit wide. Every one. And the mission handed down, generation to generation, is to work at perfecting the union, a mission he now leaves us with a way forward.”
The Democratic president’s message came amid criticism from Republicans that he campaigned and still communicates as a deal-minded centrist but has governed from the far Left. Biden has yet to strike a major deal with GOP lawmakers, but he could soon if he can finalize a possible bipartisan infrastructure package with a group of 20 Republican and Democratic senators.
Biden served with Warner for three decades in the Senate and, in a May statement responding to Warner’s passing, said that “the John Warner [he] knew was guided by two things: his conscience and our Constitution.”
“From fighting for international rules and norms to help keep the peace among nations, to his principled stances to oppose torture and support our armed forces and our national security, I always knew that John’s decisions were guided by his values — even when we disagreed on the policy outcomes,” the president wrote at the time. “When told that if he voted in a way that was not in line with his party’s position, as he did numerous times on issues of rational gun policy, women’s rights, and judicial nominees, that ‘people would say,’ his favorite rejoinder was, ‘Let ‘em say it.'”
Warner died in May at the age of 94.
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You can watch the president’s full remarks below.
