Trust and Carter receive their eulogies

By Francis Wilkinson / Bloomberg Opinion

President Jimmy Carter’s life mapped the American Century. His funeral Thursday at the National Cathedral in Washington suggests that century, like Carter’s life, is ended.

The U.S. can still do an impressive state funeral. America looked, for about two hours, like a self-respecting nation that takes itself seriously. The service members bearing the flag-draped casket of the former commander-in-chief were crisply synchronized. The orchestra was nimble and rich, the choir heavenly, the dignitaries of the highest quality. But the flags outside the cathedral, flapping in the wild Washington wind, recalled the fire tornado devouring one of the nation’s largest cities. And inside the cathedral, between Barack Obama and Melania Trump, in a pew in the second row, sat the president-elect, Donald Trump.

Trump took a chance in attending. The Carter funeral might have been a bookend to the 2018 funeral of Sen. John McCain, which was partly planned, and wholly perceived, as the war hero’s rebuke to Trump. McCain’s daughter Meghan gave a weepy, defiant eulogy that jabbed at the then-president, who was not invited to attend. “The America of John McCain does not need to be made great again,” she said, “because it is already great.”

The memorial for Honest Jimmy offered an opportunity for even more dramatic contrasts. Vice President Al Gore, who ceded the presidency rather than rock the republic, stood shoulder to shoulder with Vice President Mike Pence, who safeguarded the constitutional order against the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. Predictably, the eulogies extolled Carter’s “honesty and truth-telling.”

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