Usually, the passing of American luminaries is hardly felt in the Jewish State, thick as it is with pressing domestic news. The gentleman from South Carolina was different: he had spent so long passionately and eloquently explaining to his fellow Americans that their nation’s interests in the Middle East were neatly aligned with Israel’s that he was seen as more than a mere political ally: He was a true friend, and breathless media reports treated him as one, mourning him prominently and at length.
The grief is well deserved, as is the love. Few are the politicians who possessed such a clear understanding of the challenges facing western civilisation, the sacrifices that must be made to protect it, and the alliances it would take to keep it safe. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, for example, Graham quickly organised a bipartisan delegation to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, making sure his fellow lawmakers understood precisely what was at stake in the war against Hamas, Hezbollah, and their overlords in Tehran.
And yet, incredibly, Lindsey Graham’s true greatness lay somewhere else entirely, in possessing a quality too many of us assumed to be extinct, a quality without which no political system could ever thrive – grace.
If you want to see that rare virtue on display, look up the speech Senator Graham gave during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. Or maybe “speech” is putting it too mildly: showing the sort of real emotion all too uncommon in a business rarely accused of excess candour, Graham thundered at his Democrat friends across the aisle, friends he’d spent decades in the Senate genuinely cultivating in the interest of bipartisan collaboration.
“When you see Sotomayor and Kagan,” he said, referring to two of the liberal justices, “tell them that Lindsey said hello, because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy.”
The sham the senator was talking about was hurling rape allegations at Kavanaugh not in good faith and prior to the hearing, but as a malicious smear campaign intended to portray Kavanaugh as a villain on national TV.
Delivering his remarks, Graham wasn’t merely angry – he was hurt. And even if you knew nothing about the man – didn’t know, say, that he was the first in his family to attend college, that he chose to forgo more lucrative career paths by joining the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or that, when both his parents died within months of each other, he continued to pursue his studies while raising his 13-year-old sister – you could still tell, just by watching him address Kavanaugh, that he was a man who cared very deeply about his country and believed profoundly in the possibility of practising politics for the common good.
“Boy, you all want power,” he fumed at his Democrat colleagues. “God, I hope you never get it… This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap.”
In a political culture that produces outrage far faster than it can consume it, Graham’s cri de coeur was soon filed away and largely forgotten. It oughtn’t to be: in just under five minutes that day in the Senate, the late lawmaker delivered a reminder of a truth everywhere imperilled these days and yet never so urgently needed, namely that we’ve nothing more precious and essential to protect than politics.
Because politics, Lindsey Graham understood, was the only tool we had with which to build and sustain institutions, the only pursuit through which we can grow from a band of warring tribe into something resembling a community. And as if that insight wasn’t noble enough, Graham also understood politics correctly not as a bloody contact sport that furnished the winner with praise and power but as a deeply humbling pursuit, one that taught its practitioners the art of failing better.
Consider, for example, his early opposition to the man he depicted as the destroyer of the Republic Party, Donald John Trump. When the latter was elected, Graham neither preened about “resistance” nor scurried for political safety. Instead, he put country before party and, even more difficult, before ego, backtracked on his criticism, allied himself with the president, and managed to advance a number of his most cherished causes, including the war on Iran.
This move won him the scorn of many who believe politics to be fundamentally corrupt and who favour grand, radical, and ultimately empty gestures over the hard, slow, and maddening work of governing. Thankfully, the Senator consistently rated as one of America’s last great bipartisan champions knew better, and knew, too, that no one man’s ambition ranked higher than the nation’s needs and interests.
Israelis, heading to the ballot again in just a few months, would do well to learn that, too, from Lindsey Graham, as would folks despairing of politics anywhere from Manchester to Manhattan. There may be nothing quite as old fashioned in the age of performative outrage on social media as a Lindsey Graham type advocating respect, sacrifice, dignity, and common cause; but, ultimately, nothing else works in the long run, and nothing else matters.
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