PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Eulogies to the late Senator John McCain evoked a different time in our history, a time when individuals with different perspectives could enunciate those perspectives at one moment, then get along well in the next.

That was the senator from Arizona who, in death, was still able communicate messages about getting back to productive politics.

McCain asked specifically that the two persons who beat him in presidential races – George Bush and Barack Obama – speak at his memorial service in Washington, D.C.

Both agreed willingly.

Speaking before his flag-draped casket under the soaring stone arches of the Washington National Cathedral, both Bush and Obama denounced what they characterized as the toxic partisanship currently in the capital and praised McCain’s ability to rise above it.

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse seems small, mean, petty, trafficking in bombast and insults, phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Obama said before a host of current and former lawmakers and White House officials.

The former president noted a type of “politics that pretends to be brave and tough but is in fact born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”

Bush said, “If we are ever tempted to forget who we are, to grow weary of our cause, John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this.”

Of course, without mentioning his name, both Bush and Obama were referred to President Donald Trump who (a) was not invited to the memorial service, and (b) spent his day tweeting and playing golf.

Other speakers at the service also alluded to Trump. “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,” Meghan McCain, the senator’s daughter, said when she spoke, an apparent reference to the president’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

McCain’s daughter described her father as “the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly.”

As he started speaking Obama joked that McCain’s request to have him and Bush speak at his funeral reflected his mischievous side.

“After all what better way to get a last laugh then by making George and I say nice things about him to a national audience,” Obama said.

It was a fitting conclusion to the memorials to the senator who stood for high principles of sacrifice and service. One hopes that his commitments could serve as an example for others in public life – or in private life, for that matter.