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(Bloomberg) — Washington will pay tribute to Jimmy Carter on Thursday, bringing together political rivals in the wake of a rancorous and volatile election to honor a former president praised by both parties for his humility and decency. 

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The day of national mourning for Carter — who died in December at the age of 100 — will be highlighted by a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral less than two weeks before the White House changes hands from President Joe Biden to President-elect Donald Trump.

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The two rivals will be joined by others from their exclusive club — former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — as well as at least one foreign leader in outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for a rare and solemn occasion.

For a polarized political class and electorate still grappling with a divisive November election, it’ll be an opportunity to honor a figure whose checkered presidency was followed by a remarkable stretch outside of office where he won the admiration of many by dedicating himself to promoting values such as human rights and free and fair elections.

Carter was a peanut farmer who grew up in his early childhood without electricity and indoor plumbing. He went on to serve in the US Navy and as governor of Georgia before becoming president. That life story of a Washington outsider who rose to power and accomplished much beyond the Oval Office has drawn fresh attention and praise in an age when deriding political opponents as out-of-touch is a standard campaign tactic. 

At the same time, the pomp and circumstance of a state funeral will be a display of the capital’s formal and ceremonial side. The last such occasion was in 2018, when former President George H.W. Bush also received a state funeral bringing together the living members of the presidents’ club. 

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Carter himself showed respect for the stately rituals of the office, even though he wasn’t shy about sharing his political views — at times rankling his successors, including leaders of his own party. He was the first former president to accept the invitation to attend Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. But he also would castigate the Republican as dishonest and in his last months said he wanted to live long enough to cast a vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — which he did.

Trump in recent days has been vocal about his own criticisms of Carter’s presidency, most notably about the treaty Carter signed that turned over control of the Panama Canal to Panama, while insisting at a press conference on Tuesday that he “liked him as a man.”

“I didn’t want to bring up the Panama Canal because of Jimmy Carter’s death,” Trump said at the press conference, defending his criticisms of Carter over the canal after being asked about the issue. “Other people have asked me about it.”

Trump, though, has also vented at the practice of lowering flags to half-mast for 30 days after the death of a president or former president, a period that will run through his inauguration on Jan. 20.

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“Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, claiming Democrats were elated to have the flags lowered on his Inauguration Day.

Trump is not slated to speak at Thursday’s funeral, but Biden is. 

Tributes to Carter regularly acknowledge that his presidency was hardly a resounding success. An oil shortage and raging inflation domestically, coupled with the Iran hostage crisis that ran up against a landslide reelection loss to President Ronald Reagan, all overshadow his achievement of warmer ties between Israel and Egypt through the Camp David Accords and his establishment of formal relations with China. 

There are echoes for Biden — a one-term jocular leader who has also struggled with inflation and conflict in the Middle East and who is a kindred spirit to Carter on issues such as renewable energy and education.

“Some look at Jimmy Carter and see a man of a bygone era,” Biden said after his death. “I see a man, not only of our time, but for all times.”

The parallels between the two Democrats weren’t lost on Trump during the 2024 election, in which he and Republicans regularly invoked the former president, casting him as the embodiment of a weak, one-term president, and likening him to Biden. Trump at rallies would mock Biden as a poor president who was making Carter’s own tenure look better by comparison.

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Earlier: Remembering Carter, in Words and Pictures: Businessweek Daily

Where rivals Trump and Biden have come together is in praising Carter as a decent person. Carter’s almost half-century of post-presidential work included extensive humanitarian efforts through the Carter Center that he founded with his late wife, Rosalynn Carter — work that contributed to his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump said Carter was a “truly good man” who “worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.”

“While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

—With assistance from Brian Platt and Justin Sink.

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