“I think it’s fair to say that they have a very different view of this country and what this country means, here and abroad,” said Mark Salter, the senator’s longtime friend and co-author who sat with Mr. McCain — often with a lump in his throat — during the many discussions about his looming death. “His overall message was: ‘It doesn’t have to be this shitty.’”

The series of events honoring Mr. McCain is the kind of grandiose spectacle that is normally reserved for someone who became president, not someone who twice failed to do so. Friends said that Mr. McCain was surprised by the level of interest in his death even as he planned it…

Mr. McCain’s closest friends insisted this week that the senator did not harbor a personal grudge toward the president, even at the end. They described him as mostly interested in promoting the cause of bipartisanship and compromise that, as a “maverick” lawmaker, he had carefully fashioned into one of the most durable political brands of the last half-century.