Biden honors John McCain in Arizona, highlighting battle for the "soul of America"

President Biden honored the late Republican Sen. John McCain, his longtime Senate colleague, on Thursday at a dedication ceremony for a new library in Arizona named for the senator and war hero, with the president using the occasion to harken back to his 2020 campaign theme about the battle for the "soul of America." 

"Five years ago, when John was dying from brain cancer, John wrote a farewell letter to the nation," Mr. Biden said. "His words track back centuries, to America's founding, toward the triumphant future. Here's what John wrote, and I quote: 'We are citizens of the world, the world's greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.' Americans never quit, Americans never hide from history. John was right."

Mr. Biden used the remarks in Tempe to speak about the state of democracy, which he said "all of us are being asked right now to maintain."

At one point, Mr. Biden was interrupted by a protester, who he asked to "shush up" and said he would speak to him later. "Democracy isn't easy, as we just demonstrated," Mr. Biden quipped.

As he heads into the 2024 election, Mr. Biden is seeking to again court voters opposed to former President Donald Trump — especially anti-Trump Republicans. Before his death in 2018, McCain was one of the most prominent Trump critics in the GOP. Trump disparaged McCain frequently, even after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Cindy McCain, his widow, endorsed Mr. Biden for president in 2020. The president appointed her to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in 2021, and she became the executive director of the World Food Programme earlier this year.  

The McCain Library will be developed by the McCain Institute and Arizona State University, with funds from the American Rescue Plan going toward construction.

Mr. Biden and McCain served together in the Senate for decades and were close friends. In 2008, they found themselves on opposite sides of the bitter 2008 presidential election, when McCain was the Republican nominee and Mr. Biden was running to become vice president. 

Mr. Biden delivered an emotional eulogy at McCain's funeral after his death in 2018, saying he "always thought of John as a brother, with a hell of a lot of family fights." He awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.

While in Vietnam earlier this month, Mr. Biden visited the John McCain Memorial in Hanoi, near the spot where McCain's Skyhawk dive bomber was shot down by North Vietnamese fighters in 1967. He was captured and served more than five years in a POW camp.

"I miss him. He was a good friend," Mr. Biden said after visiting the memorial. 

McCain represented Arizona in the Senate for over three decades, and the state is one of the key battleground states that Mr. Biden must defend in 2024.

Until 2020, Arizona had been a Republican stronghold for years, with two Republican senators and a streak of supporting GOP presidential candidates that stretched back to 1996. But following former Sen. Jeff Flake's retirement and McCain's death in 2018, both Senate seats flipped to Democrats and Mr. Biden narrowly won the state in 2020. 

In 2020, Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally, who had been appointed to fill McCain's seat, in a special election. He successfully defended the seat against Blake Masters in 2022, when Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake to take the governor's mansion as well. nd on your mobile or streaming device.

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