U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina died Saturday night at the age of 71. Had his untimely death not occurred, one imagines his passion for service (and for politics) as well as his wily survival skills might have carried him into the ranks of the longest serving Senate members in the history of the republic. He was heavily favored to win election to a fifth term in office in this year’s election cycle.
Graham first came to national attention as one of the House impeachment managers in the trial of President Bill Clinton’s misdeeds in the beginning of his second term. The congressman was young but memorable. His colleague Jim Rogan recalls him uttering lines that seemed regularly to end up on the evening news. While impeachment would ultimately sink Rogan’s re-election, Graham gained strength in the increasingly Republican South Carolina of the time. Like Richard Nixon, he would ride a prosecutorial role in a national scandal all the way to the U.S. Senate.
But there was far more to Graham than being a Clinton impeachment celebrity. In 2002, he won a Republican primary race to succeed Strom Thurmond, alternately famous and infamous as a former “Dixiecrat” and segregationist turned conservative Republican who retired from the U.S. Senate at the age of 100 and was one of the longest tenured senators in American history.
Although he replaced one of the Senate’s most notable figures, Graham quickly made a reputation of his own. Graham, a strong John McCain ally, initially opposed Donald Trump with vigor, but he became a staunch Trump supporter. President Trump, clearly moved at the news of Graham’s death, described him as almost “a member of the family.” For Trump, that is really saying something,
In the Senate, Graham demonstrated an intense desire to operate as a practical politician making contributions to the judiciary nomination process and to American foreign policy. Many will recall his impassioned defense of Brett Kavanaugh during the judge’s confirmation process as a candidate for the Supreme Court. Some believe his vocal intervention helped turn the tide in the contentious process.
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Hunter (J.D., Ph.D.) serves as senior fellow for First Liberty’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy. He is the author of Postliberal Protestants: Baptists between Obergefell and Christian Nationalism, The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide, and The System Has a Soul. His work has appeared in a wide variety of other books and journals. He is a regular commentator on the popular podcast The World & Everything in It.