There’s not a lot I have to add to the reporting on Lindsey Graham’s sudden and unexpected death. The longtime South Carolina senator died yesterday evening after what his office is calling a “brief and sudden illness.” (Other unconfirmed reports point to a heart attack and cardiac arrest.) Obituaries are referring to him as a consistent foreign policy hawk, a stalwart Trump supporter. Both true. But there’s another feature of his personality and political career that is key to understanding the man. He always needed a daddy. Or let’s say a political leader. A top dog.
Graham was first elected to the House in 1994 and was very much part of the Gingrich Revolution. He was a leader — though perhaps not the most carnivorous — of the push to impeach Bill Clinton. He was one of the impeachment managers in the Senate trial. So in the ’90s he was one of those right wing foot soldiers of Gingrichism. But then Gingrich got bounced from the speakership and Congress, and a couple years later Graham got elected to the Senate. And after not too long he fell in with John McCain, who was then in the most heterodox period of his Senate career — after the 2000 presidential run and before he had to start getting a bit more into line to try again in 2008. (Hard to recall now but there were real hints or at least rumors that McCain might switch parties.) But the point is that Graham became very, very much McCain’s guy, almost like his deputy or top follower. And his politics, his political style if not always his policy positions, became very, very different. A lot of the interventionist stuff either came from McCain or was deepened and amplified by him.
McCain-era Graham was a very, very different guy than he was in the ’90s era. He was anything but a partisan warrior. Like McCain, he leaned into friendships and alliances with Democrats. A big pal of both men was none other than Joe Biden. He was also one of the most vocal critics, beginning in 2015, of Donald Trump.
But then just a few months into Trump’s first term, in 2017, McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer and died the following year. Almost simultaneous with Trump’s reign in Washington, McCain was mostly gone from the scene, largely absent from the Senate. This kicked off another transformation, or we might call it an adoption.
Of course, Graham isn’t the only Republican senator who made his peace with Donald Trump. Ted Cruz almost led a convention rebellion against Trump. But he found his way to being another pretty loyal foot soldier in pretty short order. (For Graham, the pyrotechnics over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a pivotal moment.) But Graham’s transformation was always a bit more than other Republican senators making their peace with the new regime. Graham really, really wanted to be Trump’s guy. And he really did become Trump’s guy. If you observed the transformation closely, it always seemed more than just an effort to secure his political standing in the order. He really wanted to be one of Trump’s right hands and all that.
What I’ve described above are pretty major political and even personality transformations. The first one, from Gingrich to McCain, might be seen as part of the different personality of the Senate or perhaps a partisan softening moving into later middle age. But the second one points to something different, more of a pattern. I don’t know how these shifts will figure in his obituaries. In general, they’ve gotten pretty little attention over the years, even though they’re certainly not hidden or unknown. Graham was a natural follower. He needed a top dog, a daddy figure he could arrange himself around. In the interest of saying something positive about the departed, Graham did remain a supporter of NATO and even more an opponent of Russian expansionism in eastern Europe. Indeed, he had just returned from one of many trips to Ukraine and there announced that he’d secured Trump’s blessing for a tightened round of sanctions against Russia. Still, he managed to work those angles within the confines of Trump loyalty.
There are worse things you can say about a man than that he was a loyal follower, or perhaps a born follower. There are others one could say about Graham, though it’s not the moment for that. But this feature of his personality and his 30 years in Washington politics deserves more attention, and, I think, is essential to understanding the man.