My plans changed twice this morning.  First the weather. The rain put a damper on my plan to train for next week’s SEABlue Prostate Cancer Awareness 5K run. So I chose my other option, to climb down to the basement and beat up my heart on the elliptical machine. One-half hour, the killer interval setting.

Lately, my entertainment when pumping away has been streaming an episode of Veep, the profane comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, the single-minded, self-important politician who transitions from V.P. to POTUS to just plain frustrated over a course of six HBO seasons. It is raunchy, it is foul, and it is just plain hilarious. And according to my one political insider, it is damn accurate.

But on my way to the basement, I noticed the TV in the kitchen was tuned to NBC, where the memorial service for Senator John McCain was about to begin. I stood and watched the preliminaries, all the dignitaries, the past Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Cabinet members. Warren Beatty and Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger! And of course the grieving family, especially the three generations of McCain women; mother Roberta, wife Cindy, and daughter Meghan.

So when I went to the basement to get my miles in, I opted for pathos over comedy and tuned into the memorial. Meghan McCain filled my eyes and ears as I pumped away. Bathed in a daughter’s love, the full measure of the man–the father and the hero–came across louder than any viciously funny one-liner that I would have heard from Selina on Veep. My accelerated heart rate was due to more than just my physical exertion as tears repeatedly came to my eyes.

I listened to all the others; Bush and Kissinger and Lieberman and Obama. Their reverence for McCain was obvious, their subtext just as obvious. It saddened me to think of our current state of discourse; it made me wonder who still among us will be able to command such respect, such bipartisan respect, in the years to come.

John McCain may have been as profane and at times outrageous as Selina Meyer, but unlike the TV character, and unlike so many real-life pols, he had character and a shining vision for our country. I never met him, I never voted for him, but I will miss him.
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