Thursday morning, in images carried live on every major cable news network, the body of Senator John McCain arrived at the North Phoenix Baptist Church in a hearse with the word “Dignity” on the rear window. Inside, the Republican senator was remembered, by a man who ran on a ticket against him, for a friendship that transcended political difference.
Thursday night, at an Indiana campaign rally carried live on Fox News, President Trump accused his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, of “getting away with” unnamed misdeeds; attacked his own Justice Department and F.B.I. for not “doing their job”; and taunted “elite” detractors: “I’m president, and they’re not.”
The broadcasts were separate. But they were not unrelated. They amounted to a last argument between the senator and the president who clashed with him in life (“I like people who weren’t captured”) and slighted him in death. They were competing programs with competing visions, not of policy, but of civic life.
Mr. McCain, who died Saturday, had no control over the president’s itinerary. But as an omnipresent Sunday-show guest who courted reporters on his “Straight Talk Express” campaign bus, he was not unaware in life of how things played on TV.
As he worked out the details of his ceremonies in his final days, he had to know that he was not only orchestrating his farewell. He was also counterprogramming the long-running, corrosive TV serial in which Mr. Trump is accustomed to being the star.
Mr. McCain planned the itinerary. He picked the music. (Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” played as the recessional.)
And he invited the speakers, especially — an unmistakable retort to the never-forgive-never-forget Trump spirit — his rivals.
On Saturday, the former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom he ran against, will eulogize him in Washington. On Thursday, a succession of speakers led to former Vice President Joseph Biden.
“My name’s Joe Biden,” he said. “I’m a Democrat. And I love John McCain.”
Mr. Biden’s speech was tender and empathetic, drawing on his own loss of his wife and children to sympathize with the McCain family. But it turned fiery, his voice roused to a holler, when he praised his colleague’s personal code.
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