Heaven knowns, the McCain family has had plenty of provocation; Meghan McCain has the right to eulogize her father however she pleases; and given Trump’s appalling pettiness about McCain — even by his standards — the president’s allies have no ground to stand on in complaining about a lack of decorum. But I still found the obvious political agenda at the McCain funeral distasteful. It was kind of like the Paul Wellstone funeral for the political establishment.
This, of course, is exactly what the media wanted. It has weaponized McCain’s memory against Trump and the GOP, and largely reduced McCain’s career to three moments — his instant dissent from the woman who said Obama was an Arab at his town hall, his gracious concession speech after losing to Obama in 2008, and his vote against Obamacare repeal. The first two were genuinely admirable, but the overarching lesson is that Republicans should be good losers and defy and frustrate their own party. It would be easier to take the celebration of these qualities if the press were equally as eager to lionize them in Democrats.
