John McCain lost the election in a way that even his worst enemies can respect. For a man with an explosive temper, he kept his rag to the end. For a candidate with more reason than most to detest George W.Bush, he distanced himself from that Administration with dignity. When his more rabid followers wanted to savage Barack Obama with accusations of his being a Muslim, or a terrorist, he restrained them out of natural decency.

This battle between black and white, youth and experience, was predicted to be one of the nastiest ever. Yet it has been among the most civilised. There was no “Willie Horton moment”, no slide into the mire of racism, no dirty tricks and no ugly smear campaign. The punches landed hard, but not below the belt. The mistakes Mr McCain made were errors of judgment, not ethics. It was a clean fight and that, in large measure, was down to the essential fairness of the man who lost it.

I am glad Mr McCain was defeated. By almost every measure, he was the lesser candidate. When the economy faltered, so did he. His claim to greater experience shrivelled in the light of his rival's blinding charisma. McCain was yesterday and Obama is tomorrow.

Yet as the new President heads to the White House in a blaze of adulation, it is worth recalling just how worthy an opponent he faced: history offers few more admirable presidential failures than Mr McCain.

Times Archive, 1967: US aircraft keep up Hanoi bombing

One of the American pilots shot down yesterday was Lieutenant-Commander McCain

“Victory has a thousand fathers,” said John F.Kennedy, “but defeat is an orphan.” Presidential losers are usually sorry figures. John Kerry slipped from the limelight unmourned. Al Gore has tried to remake himself, but was never truly loved. Bob Dole went from losing an election to advertising Viagra: somehow, that said it all. But history may well be kinder to Mr McCain, for in many ways his is a quintessentially American national character, transcending mere politics.

When he seemed all but dead politically during the primaries, the old soldier hauled himself back into contention, gnarled and gritty, the wear and tear and determination written on his face. “I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein,” he once said.

His sense of humour was of the old school, poke-in-the-eye sort, and he found himself repeatedly apologising for it. When he sang “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran” to the tune of Barbara Ann, it was a scandal in the eyes of his detractors. But it was also genuinely funny, something most politicians do not dare to be.

Mr McCain will recover swiftly from defeat for he can laugh at himself; only people who have truly suffered can mock misfortune. He even managed to make a grim joke of the five years he spent in Vietnamese captivity. When accused of representing a state he had never really lived in, his response was wry and devastating: “As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”

Mr Obama's story is extraordinary and uplifting, but Mr McCain's tale is an epic of raw courage. Whatever one's politics, it is impossible to read his account of injury, imprisonment, torture and loneliness as a PoW without admiration for the sheer, bloody-minded tenacity of the man. His jailers offered him freedom as a publicity ploy and he told them to go to hell - but less politely.

He emerged from captivity with his body in tatters, but his honour intact. “The sanctity of personal honour was the only lesson my father felt necessary to impart to me,” he once wrote. “All else, he reasoned, would be satisfactorily managed were I to accept, gratefully, the demands of honour.”

Mr McCain guarded his honour through Vietnam; he maintained it during the vicious primary campaign of 2000, when his opponents attempted to smear him by suggesting that he had fathered a black child or lost his wits under torture. He stuck to his sense of honour when he opposed the Bush Administration on climate change, gun laws and tax cuts.

And he fought this campaign with honour. His positions on key issues sometimes wobbled with the winds of expediency. His choice of Sarah Palin as running-mate looked cynical, but in reality it was decision made by man in a bunker, looking for a way out. I remember watching Mr McCain and Mrs Palin at a rally in Ohio, soon after her surprise nomination, and noting the awestruck look on his face as the moose-hunter in high heels wowed the hockey moms. He seems to have believed that she could deliver small-town America; he was smitten. In retrospect, it was huge mistake, but it was not a dishonourable one.

When the two candidates were discussing what format their debates should take, Mr McCain sent Mr Obama a letter, which concluded: “I also suggest we fly together to the first town hall meeting as a symbolically important act embracing the politics of civility.” This was not just another tactic; it was a statement of belief.

A McCain presidency would probably have been divisive, aggressive and dangerously short-lived. He is a flawed figure, but he remains a civilised politician in an age of uncivilised politics. The world is a safer, more hopeful place without John McCain in the White House; but the world is a better place for having men such as him in it.