McCain’s career has had its low moments, as all of ours do — a banking scandal, Sarah Palin — but he exemplifies a practical standard of excellence to an extraordinary degree: enduring in Vietnam, seeking compromise legislation on everything from immigration reform to campaign spending, condemning torture after 9/11.

Moreover, I don’t think there’s another politician now living who devotes so much of his speeches to little biographies of his own exemplars, people like James Stockdale, Bud Day, Morris Udall and Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez. He has turned his own heroes into educational resources for his country, and used them to evangelize our national ideals.

These sorts of testimonies help weave a shared moral order, which is necessary to unite, guide and motivate a diverse country.