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CNN Live Event/Special

John McCain's Daughter Meghan McCain Speaks at His Funeral; Former Senator Joe Lieberman Speaks at John McCain's Funeral. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired September 01, 2018 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: -- foreign leaders have come to Washington to join in this moment, including the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. And as we know, John McCain was very much involved in trying to help Ukraine deal with the Russian problem and help some of those other countries, the Baltic nations as well, several leaders have come to Washington to pay respects.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No question. And Senator McCain, the current chairman, of course now late chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I cannot think of another senator in my time in Washington covering the hill that was a senator as recognized around the world by leaders and would take meetings with leaders. He was a senator.

But this is something that we don't really see as much of anymore, his interest in U.S. foreign policy and whatnot. But it is striking that we're seeing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sitting there as well. And he had his quarrels with John McCain as well. I think Senator McCain would like us to point out it was not all sunshine and light. He and Mitch McConnell fought to the death over campaign finance reform and other matters there. So that was a big part of who Senator McCain was. He loved his fights as much as anything.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Especially with Ted Kennedy. One of his favorite, his partner and his adversary, Mark Salter was telling a story the other night where they both happened to be walking across the floor at the same time, saw two young senators having this debate, and just decided to get right in the middle of it, and ended up in the well of the Senate with their fingers in one another's chests, yelling at one another. And they left the Senate chamber hugging one another. And it was so perfectly John McCain.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: It's also worth mentioning his role with the military and veterans. Vice President Pence said yesterday at the capital nobody gave generals a harder time and nobody worked harder for everyday soldiers. And that's important to remember today as well.

JAN BREWER, (R) FORMER ARIZONA GOVERNOR: He has a wonderful history, I mean, his background and everything, and man of great faith, but yet was irreverent. That captured people, because that's a little of what we all are. He was just bigger than life. And he was so open to talking and speaking to each and every person no matter where he was. He always had time, would remember people's names when we were out campaigning all over the country that he hadn't seen for five years. I asked him one time, I said John, how do you remember their names? And he looked at me with a straight face, and he goes, because they told me.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: Go ahead.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You mentioned the foreign leaders. He took on as his mission the last couple of years traveling the world to reassure people that America's commitments were steadfast, even if our leadership had changed. And that is going to be a role that's going to be hard to fill.

ZELENY: His Senate seat will not be filled, and we'll have much more to say about that after he's laid to rest. But his position, you're right, David, will not be filled. I assume that Lindsey Graham will try to step into that role. But also we should point out one of the pall bearers is someone who has a very different view of Vladimir Putin. It's a Russian dissident. That was picked for a reason as well as we see the family now coming in.

BLITZER: The procession has begun. The family has walked in. The service about to begin. We will hear from the Very Reverend Randolph Hollerith, the Dean of the Washington National Cathedral. Let's listen in.

(MUSIC)

[10:08:12] RT. REV. MARIANN EDGAR BUDDE, BISHOP OF WASHINGTON: I am resurrection and I am life says the Lord. Whoever has faith in me shall have life even though he die. And everyone who has life and has committed himself to me in faith shall not die forever. As for me, I know that my redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth after my awaking, he will raise me up. And in my body I shall see God. I, myself, shall see and behold him who is my friend and not a stranger.

For none of us has life in himself, and none becomes his own master when he dies. For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord. And if we die, we die in the Lord. So then whether we live or die, we are the Lord's possession.

[10:10:02] Happy from now on are those who die in the Lord, so it is, says the spirit, for they rest from their labors.

(MUSIC)

[10:15:42] VERY REV. RANDOLPH MARSHALL HOLLERITH, DEAN, WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: Please be seated. Good morning, my name is Randy Hollerith, Dean of Washington National Cathedral. On behalf of Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of the diocese in Washington, and all of us who serve our Lord at this cathedral, welcome. Welcome to this house of prayer for all people.

It is an honor to host this service for Senator McCain. To Senator McCain's wife Cindy, and his mother Roberta, and the entire McCain family, our hearts are with you and with all those across our country and around the world who grieve the loss of this great American patriot and statesman.

Today we give John Sidney McCain III back to the God of love who gave him to us. While we mourn his death, our faith tells us that beyond this life there is indeed more life, and God never lets us go. So as the old prayer says, we gather to give thanks for all the goodness and courage that have passed from John McCain's life into the lives of others and have left the world a richer and better place. For his life's task faithfully and honorably discharged for good humor, gracious affection, kindly generosity, for sadness met without surrender, and weakness endured without defeat. May the Lord bless him and keep him this day and always. Thank you.

MEGHAN MCCAIN, JOHN MCCAIN'S DAUGHTER: The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for, and I hate very much to leave it. When Ernest Hemingway's Robert Jordan at the close "For Whom the Bell Tolls" lies wounded and waiting for his last fight, these are among his final thoughts. My father had every reason to think the world was an awful place. My father had every reason to think the world was not worth fighting for. My father had every reason to think the world was worth leaving. He did not think any of those things. Like the hero of his favorite book, John McCain took the opposite view. You had to have a lot of luck to have had such a good life.

I am here before you today saying the words I have never wanted to say, giving the speech I have never wanted to give, feeling the loss I have never wanted to feel. My father is gone. John Sidney McCain III was many things. He was a sailor, he was an aviator, he was a husband, he was a warrior, he was a prisoner, he was a hero, he was a congressman, he was a senator, he was a nominee for president of the United States. These are all of the titles and the roles of a life that has been well lived. They are not the greatest of his titles nor the most important of his roles.

[10:20:08] He was a great man. We gather 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 live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served. He was a great fire who burned bright.

In the past few days, my family and I have heard from so many of those Americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminated what is best about them. We are grateful to them because they are grateful to him. A few have resented that fire for the light it cast upon them, for the truth it revealed about their character, but my father never cared what they thought, and even that small number still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up to the example of John McCain.

My father was a great man. He was a great warrior. He was a great American. I admired him for all of these things, but I love him because he was a great father. My father knew what it was like to grow up in the shadow of greatness. He did just as his father had done before him, he was the son of a great admiral who was also the son of a great admiral. And when it came time for the third John Sidney McCain to become a man, he had no choice but in his own eyes walk in those exact same paths. He had to become a sailor. He had to go to war. He had to have his shot at becoming a great admiral as they also had done.

The paths of his father and grandfather led my father director to the harrowing hell of the Hanoi Hilton. This is the public legend that is John McCain. This is where all the biographies, the campaign literature, and public remembrances say he showed his character, his patriotism, his faith, and his endurance in the worst of possible circumstances. This is where we learned who John McCain truly was.

And all of that is very true except for the last part. Today I want to share with you where I found out who John McCain truly was, and it wasn't in the Hanoi Hilton. It wasn't in the cockpit of a fast and lethal fighter jet. It wasn't on the high seas or on the campaign trail. John McCain was in all those places, but the best of him was somewhere else. The best of John McCain, the greatest of his titles, and the most important of his roles was as a father.

Imagine the warrior, the knight of the skies, gently carrying his little girl to bed. Imagine the dashing aviator who took his aircraft, hurdling off pitching decks in the South China Seas, kissing the hurt when I fell and skinned my knee. Imagine the distinguished statesman who counselled presidents and the powerful, singing with his little girl in Oak Creek during a rainstorm to singing in the rain. Imagine the senator, fierce conscience of the nation's best self, taking his 14-year-old daughter out of school because he believed I would learn more about America at the town halls he held across the country. Imagine the elderly veteran of war and government whose wisdom and courage were sought by the most distinguished men of our time, with his eyes shining with happiness as he gave his blessing for his grown daughter's marriage.

You all have to imagine that. I don't have to because I lived it all. I know who he was. I know what defined him. I got to see it every single day of my blessed life. John McCain was not defined by prison, by the Navy, by the Senate, by the Republican Party or by any single one of the deeds in his absolutely extraordinary life. John McCain was defined by love.

Several of you out there in the pews who crossed swords with him or found yourselves on the receiving end of his famous temper or were at a cross purposes to him on nearly anything are right at this moment doing your best to stay stone-faced. Don't. You know full well if John McCain were in your shoes here today, he would be using some salty word he learned in the Navy while my mother jabbed him in the arm in embarrassment. He would look back at her and grumble, and maybe stop talking, but he would keep grinning. She was the only one who could do that.

[10:25:02] On their first date when he still did not know what sort of woman she was, he recited a Robert Service poem to her called "The Cremation of Sam McGee" about an Alaskan prospector who welcomed his cremation as the only way to get warm in the icy north. "There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil

for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold." He learned it in Hanoi. A prisoner in the next cell had wrapped it out in code over and over during the long years of captivity. My father figure that if Cindy Lou Helmsley would sit through that and appreciate the dark humor that had seen him through so many years of imprisonment, she might sit through a lifetime with him as well, and she did.

John McCain was defined by love. This love of my father for my mother was the most fierce and lasting of them all, mom. Let me tell you what love meant to John McCain and to me. His love was the love of a father who meant as much as he comforts, he was endlessly present for us. And though we did not always understand it, he was always teaching. He didn't expect us to be like him. His ambitions for us unmoored from any worldly achievement was to be better than him. Armed with his wisdom and informed by his experiences, long before we were even old enough to assemble our own.

As a girl I did not fully appreciate what I most fully appreciate now, how he suffered and how he wore it with his stoic silence that was once the mark of an American man. I came to appreciate it first when he demanded it of me. I was a small girl, thrown from a horse and crying from a busted collarbone. My dad picked me up. He took me to the doctor, he got me all fixed up. And he immediately took me back home and made me get back on that very same horse. I was furious at him as a child, but how I love him for it now.

My father new pain and suffering with an intimacy and immediacy most of us are blessed never to have endured. He was shot down, he was crippled, he was beaten, he was starved, he was tortured and he was humiliated. That pain never left him. The cruelty of his communist captors ensured he would never raise his arms above his head for the rest of his life. Yet he survived, yet he endured, yet he triumphed.

And there was this man who had been through all that with a little girl who simply didn't want to get back on her horse. He could have sat me down and told me of that and made me feel small because my complaint and my fear was nothing next to his pain and memory. Instead, he made me feel loved. Meghan, he said in his quiet voice that spoke with authority and meant you had best obey, get back on the horse. I did. And because I was a little girl, I resented it. Now that I am a woman, I look back across that time and see the expression on his face when I climbed back up and rode again, and I see the pride and love in his eyes as he said nothing is going to break you.

For the rest of my life, whenever I fall down, I get back up. Whenever I am hurt, I drive on. Whenever I am brought low, I rise. That is not because I am uniquely virtuous, or strong, or resilient. It is simply because my father, John McCain, was.

When my father got sick, when I asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy, he said show them how tough you are. That is what love meant to John McCain.

Love for my father also meant caring for the nation entrusted to him. My father, the true son of his father and grandfather, was born into an enduring sense of the hard won character of American greatness, and was convinced of the need to defend it with ferocity and faith. John McCain was born in a distant now vanquished outpost of American power, and he understood America as a sacred trust. He understood our republic demands responsibilities, even before it defends its rights. He knew navigating the line between good and evil was often difficult but always simple. He grasped that our purpose and meaning was rooted in a missionary's responsibility stretching back centuries.

[10:30:05] Just as the first Americans looked upon a new world full of potential for a grand experiment in freedom and self-government, so their descendants have a responsibility to defend the old world from its worst self. The America of John McCain is the America of the revolution. Fighters with no stomach for the summer soldier and sunshine patriot, making the world anew with the bells of liberty. The America of John McCain is the America of Abraham Lincoln, fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, and suffering greatly to see it through.

The America of John McCain is the America of the boys who rushed the colors in every war across three centuries, knowing in them is the life of the republic. And particularly those by their daring, as Ronald Reagan said, gave up their chance as being husbands and fathers and grandfathers and gave up their chance to be revered old men.

The America of John McCain is, yes, the America of Vietnam, fighting the fight, even in the most forewarn cause, even in the most grim circumstances, even in the most distant and hostile corner of the world, standing even in defeat for the life and liberty of other peoples in other lands.

The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She is resourceful and confident and secure. She meets her responsibilities. She speaks quietly because she is strong. America does not boast because she has no need to. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.

(APPLAUSE)

MCCAIN: That fervent faith, that proven devotion, that abiding love, that is what drove my father from the fiery skies above the Red River Delta to the brink of the presidency itself. Love defined my father. As a young man he wondered if he would measure up to his distinguished lineage. I miss him so badly. I want to tell him that he did. But I take small comfort in this. Somewhere in the great beyond where the warriors go, there are two admirals of the United States meeting their much-loved son. They are telling him he is the greatest among them.

Dad, I love you, I always have. All that I am, all that I hope, all that I dream is grounded in what you taught me. You loved me and you showed me what love must be.

An ancient Greek historian wrote that the image of great men is woven into the stuff of other men's lives. Dad, your greatness is woven into my life, it is woven into my mother's life, it is woven into my sister's life, and it is woven into my brothers' lives. It is woven into the life and liberty of the country you sacrificed so much to defend.

Dad, I know you were not perfect. We live in an era where we knock down old American heroes for all their imperfections, when no leader wants to admit to fault or failure. You were an exception and you gave us an ideal to strive for.

Look. I know you can see this gathering in this cathedral. The nation is here to remember you. Like so many other heroes, you leave us draped in the flag you loved. You defended it, you sacrificed it, you always honored it. It is good to remember we are Americans. We don't put our heroes on pedestals just to remember them. We raise them up because we want to emulate their virtues, this is how we honor them, this is how we will honor you.

My father is gone. My father is gone and my sorrow is immense, but I know his life, and I know it was great because it was good. And as much as I hate to see him go, I do know how it ended. I know that on the afternoon of August 25th in front of Oak Creek in Cornville Arizona, surrounded by the family he loved so much, an old man shook off the scars of battle one last time and arose a new man to pilot one last flight up and up and up, busting clouds left and right, straight on through to the kingdom of heaven.

[10:35:14] And he slipped the earthly bonds, put out his hand, and touched the face of God. I love you, dad.

(APPLAUSE)

From "Requiem" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie. Gladly did I live and gladly die, and I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me. Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.

(MUSIC)

(SINGING)

JOE LIEBERMAN, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Cindy McCain and the wonderful McCain family, Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, Secretaries Kissinger and Clinton, all of the other honored guests that are here, ladies and gentlemen.

Becoming John McCain's friend is one of the great blessings of my life. Being asked to pay tribute to him today is one of the great honors, and for that I thank Cindy and the entire McCain family. And I also want to thank them, including his mother, his brother, his sister, the seven wonderful children, for the love and support you gave John throughout his life and his service, none more than in the last year of his life. And you, Cindy, have been absolutely saintly and we, his friends, cannot thank you enough.

There's a special satisfaction that comes from serving a cause greater than yourself. I heard John say those words hundreds of times, particularly to young people, and you all heard them a lot as well. But for him we know they were not just words in a speech, they were the creed that he lived by. And 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.

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 make us a great nation. Not the tribal partisanship and personal attack politics that have recently characterized our life. This week's celebration of the life and values and patriotism of this hero I think have taken our country above all that. In a way it is the last great gift that John McCain gave America. And I want to suggest today that we can give a last great gift to him, which is to nurture these values 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.

Let me try to pay tribute to this great man by describing and sharing stories from our friendship, which began in the early 1990s as part of a bipartisan group pushing our government to stop the aggression and slaughter in Bosnia. And then we began to collaborate on a lot of bipartisan legislation. But really our friendship deepened in our travels together around the world with our third amigo, Lindsey Graham. When you traveled with John, even with Lindsey along, the purpose was not to have fun. In fact, sometime it seemed the purpose was just to survive the schedule he had organized. John had a restless energy every day, including the days we traveled, to get the most out of every day he possibly could, and he did. And so did we who were privileged to know him.

[10:45:07] John traveled to learn so he could be a better senator. He traveled to represent America as best he could wherever we went, and he did. And he traveled to support the men and women of our armed services, whether in war or at pace, wherever they were. And they in turn welcomed him in not just respect but awe as the hero John McCain was, is, and always will be.

In shared experiences and long conversations on these trips, John and I got to know and trust each other as friends in a way that doesn't happen because it can't happen much anymore in the frenetic Washington life of senators. Our friendship taught me many things, including, I must add, some jokes that I otherwise never would have known.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: John loved to laugh and make others laugh. When he found a joke that people liked, he told it over and over and over again. One of my favorites was about the two inmates going through the food line for dinner at the state penitentiary. One says to the other the food is terrible here. And the other says it was a lot better when I was governor.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: Yes. I heard that one often and I laughed every time because John laughed so hard every time he told it. (LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: The range of John's mind, interest, and experience was impressive and often surprising. You couldn't characterize this man. He loved to read history and fiction and talk about it, argue about it. He had a pervasive curiosity about just about everything in life. He loved the outdoors and all of God's creatures, large and small, who lived there. Most people would be surprised by how much pleasure this combative senator got from watching the hummingbirds at the McCain family home outside Sedona, Arizona.

But of course, John's great strength was his character. He was honest, fair, and civilized. In all the times we were together, I never heard him say a bigoted word about anyone. The American people saw this great quality most clearly during the 2000 campaign when that woman made an offensive statement against then senator Barack Obama. To me what was most impressive about John's reaction was that it was pure reflex. It was who John was. He didn't need to consult anyone. He immediately defended his opponent's name and honor, and thereby elevated for that moment our politics and made us a more perfect union.

Personally, I can tell you that John was a real friend in accommodating what were to him my unusual practices as a religiously observant Jew, whether it was walking with me on a Saturday to an important meeting or turning down a popular Friday night dinner invitation at the Munich security conference we went to every year because it was too far to walk, we would stay in the hotel and have what John learned to call our shalom shabbat dinners, peaceful sabbath dinners. Of course with John they weren't that peaceful.

John naturally in doing these wonderful acts of friendship grumbled all the way about what I was putting him through. Right now I think he is probably deriving some pleasure from the fact it turned out his funeral was held on a Saturday and I had to walk to get here.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: I'm sure if he were here now, he would tell me that was divine justice. He ultimately, as he did with so much of his life, turned these interfaith interferences into a truly hilarious comedy routine. It began with a solemn pronouncement by John that he was converting to Judaism.

[10:50:03] Then he explained much less solemnly, I do this not because of any particularly liking for the religion. It is just that for so many years I had to go along with all of Joe's religious nonsense that I might as well convert and get the benefits.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: One of his favorite targets was the sabbath elevators in Israel hotels which are preprogrammed to stop at every floor. John had many virtues, but patience was not one of them.

(LAUGHTER) LIEBERMAN: Therefore, a ride on those shabbat elevators were not the happiest times we spent together. I say this to say in stories how full and genuine was John's acceptance of my religious practices which were different from what he knew, but also to make a larger point, because I can tell you in everything we did together around the world and here in Washington and across America, he showed that same acceptance, respect, curiosity about everybody's religious observances, and about everything else about them that was different from himself and his own experiences.

I've said that patience was one virtue John didn't have. Forgiveness was a great virtue he did have. Here's a story to make that clear. Once on a trip to Hanoi as we were touring the Hanoi Hilton, a crowd of Vietnamese college students recognized John, and they began to chant wildly McCain, McCain. They wanted to take his pictures and have him sign autographs.

When it was over, I asked him why he got such a rock star reception in Hanoi. And with classic directness he said, well, first, Joe, it is because they have been taught that I was treated a lot better here than I really was. And second, it's because of the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. Well, that was a classic McCain understatement. Along with President Clinton and John Kerry, John McCain was the leader in Congress in bringing about the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, an extraordinary act of personal forgiveness when you consider what the Vietnamese did to him during his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

After his injuries in Vietnam he could not pursue his ambitions in the Navy. So he turned to government service as his greater American cause. Of course, I didn't know John in his youth, but I don't think from what I've heard that he was born with the natural skills of a legislator. And yet he learned them and became a great one. He knew when to be irascible and immovable, and when to negotiate and compromise to get something done. He regularly reached across party lines because he knew that was the only way to solve problems and seize opportunities for the people of our country and his state. As a result, his legislative record is extremely impressive.

He also fought and lost some big battles to stop climate change, to close the gun show loophole, to broadly reform our immigration laws. But that never seemed to get him down or diminish his ardor for the next battle. He loved to win but also he loved a good fight for a just cause, even if it didn't succeed. Overall, he won many more than he lost. And all of his big wins were achieved with bipartisan support.

In 2008 when he was Republican nominee for president, he had a far out idea of asking a democrat to be his running mate. Can you believe that? Let me explain it to you as he did. When he first talked to me about it, I said, you know, John, I'm really honored, but I don't see how you can do it. Even though I won my last election as an independent, I'm still a registered Democrat. And John's response was direct and really ennobling. That's the point, Joe, he said with a certain impatience. You're a Democrat, I'm a Republican. We could give our country the bipartisan leadership it needs for a change.

[10:55:09] When John returned to the Senate after his surgery last summer and voted against the Republican health care bill, some people accused him of being disloyal to his party and president. But that was not the case. If you listen to the speech he gave that day, you'll know it was not the case. That speech made clear that his vote was not really against that bill but against the mindless partisanship that has taken control of both of our political parties and our government and produced totally one-sided responses to complicated national problems like health care. And of course, he was right.

In his remarks last July, John also spoke eloquently of our position in the world. Of America's continuing responsibility for principled leadership in the world. It was as if he thought that might be one of his last best opportunities to move his colleagues and his country. It's a speech worth reading, but I just want to quote one sentence. What greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep America the strong, aspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and dignity and defender of the dignity of all human beings. That in short was the McCain American foreign policy -- moral, engaged, and strong.

And again, these words were not just rhetoric for John. He acted on them, he lived them. In our travels around the world I can tell you he always reassured our allies and unsettled our enemies, standing for America's best values, attacking totalitarian governments, whether in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, or anywhere else.

If we were going to a country not fully free, John insisted that we meet with local human rights activists as well as the government. I will never forget that day in Myanmar during the military dictatorship there. We met three men who had just been released from political prison and showed terrible signs of physical and psychological abuse. And yet they told us that they would never have survived if they had not heard in jail that the great American Senator John McCain had supported their cause, read their names on the U.S. Senate floor, and demanded their release.

On another occasion we visited a refugee camp for Syrians who had been forced out of their country into Turkey by the brutal aggression of Assad, the Iranians, and the Russians. We were the first members of Congress to visit that camp, and there was some concern about the reception we would receive. Earlier in the day, in fact, an official of the U.N. had been there and was booed and had shoes thrown at him.

When we arrived, a large crowd of Syrian refugees had formed and was in fact chanting. But rather than booing and throwing shoes, they were cheering and chanting words of welcome and thanks. And the two words they chanted most were "John McCain." What is most remarkable about these two stories, and I could tell you many more, is how unremarkable they are. And that's because the name John McCain based on the actions of the man John McCain had become a source of hope and inspiration for oppressed people throughout the world, as it was a source of security for allied countries that share our values.

One last story. One of John's favorite cities in the world was Jerusalem. And one of his favorite things to do there was to stand on the balcony with Lindsey and me of our hotel looking out at the old city and discussing all of the religious and political history that happened there over the centuries. So when I first told John that I had decided not to run for the Senate again in 2012, he was puzzled and frankly even a little bit angry.