Former President George W. Bush ‘honored’ to eulogize John McCain

McCain, a US senator who ran unsuccessfully for president as a self-styled maverick Republican in 2008 and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday, his office said.

Mr McCain, a senator from Arizona, announced he had gioblastoma condition in July 2017, leading many to fear that he would not be around for much longer.

The funeral procession will then head to Washington, with time provided for the public to pay their respects to Mr McCain at the Capitol Rotunda. “Our hearts and prayers are with you!”

Former President George W. Bush speaks at the opening ceremony of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., September 24, 2016.

“McCain and Jeff Flake represented embracing diversity in a way the Republican Party has been quite hostile to”, said David Wells, a professor of politics at Arizona State University.

“John McCain was a man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order”.

“The demographics haven’t looked for good for the GOP for a while”, he said, referring to the state’s explosive Hispanic population growth in the past two decades.

Bush paid tribute to McCain on Saturday, writing, “Some lives are so vivid, it is hard to imagine them ended. Godspeed, Senator. You will be sorely missed”, he said.

After retiring from the Navy in 1981, McCain moved to Arizona where he entered politics and eventually secured the presidential nomination in 2008.

McCain spent his final months with his second wife, Cindy, at their ranch in Sedona, Arizona. “Americans will be forever grateful for his heroic military service and for his steadfast integrity as a member of the United States Senate”.

The US president is facing massive fury over his failure to issue an official White House statement praising the deeds of John McCain, with his critics accusing him of insulting a true American hero because of personal enmity. She remembers him pointing to a sentence in his new book: “Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself”. On the campaign trail, Trump had controversially said that McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured in Vietnam.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called McCain “a tireless fighter for a strong trans-Atlantic alliance; his significance went well beyond his own country”.

We may never see his like again, but it is his reflection of America that we need now more than ever.

It is an honor to have been able to call Senator McCain my colleague and I am even more proud to have been able to call John my friend.