Early in Mike Bartlett's 2022 stage play, The 47th, the funeral of Jimmy Carter is held at Washington National Cathedral. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton are all in attendance. Donald Trump is not invited but turns up anyway, late. "He's here to pay his disrespects," Kamala Harris observes.
Life - or rather death - is about to imitate art as Washington prepares to bid farewell to Carter. He was the longest-lived president in US history and is the first Democratic president to die since Lyndon Johnson more than 50 years ago. State funerals used to be nonpartisan occasions where Democrats and Republicans put differences aside. But Carter's passing comes at a hinge moment when division and uncertainty prevail. Biden, a fellow one-term president felled by inflation, is heading for the door. Trump, a chaos agent promising to wreak new havoc in the US and beyond, returns to power on 20 January.
"Moments like this tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the person being honoured," Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, told MSNBC. "I think President Carter dying at this hour in the life of the republic is a reminder that we are at the end of something."
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