Lindsey Graham died last night. The senior senator from South Carolina was cruising toward a fifth term when he passed from what his office called a “brief and sudden illness.” He was 71 years old—relatively young for a United States senator.
How one reacts to the death of a public figure is a demonstration of character. I had plenty of disagreements with Sen. Graham over the past decade or two, but what’s the point of rehashing them now? Indeed, I learned a lot about how politics works by watching Graham and the reactions to him over the years.
Lindsey Graham was a notorious warmonger, seemingly itching for conflict throughout the globe. He also attempted to push through amnesty for illegal aliens during President Obama’s second term. In the eyes of many conservatives, myself included, that made him a traitor to our cause.
Yet something strange happened in 2018. President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and liberals attempted to run the same play they did in 1991 when they amplified spurious accusations of sexual assault against Clarence Thomas. Lindsey Graham stepped up as Kavanaugh’s strongest defender, castigating the Democrats who were pushing the smear and warning his Republican colleagues not to give in to such nonsense.
I remember fellow conservatives in various group chats feeling like Graham had changed, that he was on our side now… until he supported the next Ukraine war funding bill, at which point my friends figured he must not have changed after all.
Did he change, or was it simply changing circumstances?
That experience taught me that political alliances are fleeting, and we must take advantage of them when we can. Politics is more complicated than a binary friend/enemy distinction—it depends what’s happening on any given day. On foreign policy and immigration, Lindsey Graham was an adversary, but when it came to confirming conservative judges, he was an indispensable ally.
Despite being an early critic of President Trump, Graham came around to being one of his strongest supporters during his second term. People have often asked why Trump would campaign against Thomas Massie, a staunch libertarian, but endorse Lindsey Graham. That’s the answer—Graham has been a loyal supporter and partner to the president’s agenda, including doing a lot of work to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill, while Massie continually opposed the president and voted against the OBBB.
There is something laudable about standing alone on your principles, but in the end, politics is a team sport.
I don’t hold back criticism of political figures when I believe it is deserved, but I always try to remember that the person I’m criticizing is someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister, father or mother, a friend. Lindsey Graham was born in 1955 to a middle-class family and became the first in his line to attend college. He joined the ROTC on a track toward the US Air Force JAG Corps, but both his parents died within fifteen months of each other, leaving him and his young sister orphaned. Graham formally adopted her so he could support her with his USAF benefits.
I find myself in agreement with many of the reactions I’m seeing on social media this morning, each of which is a reminder that human beings are complicated:
Referring to his speech on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh, Theo Wold recalled:
For those of us who were in the Trump admin at the time, this is the Lindsey Graham we’ll always remember.
Didn’t always agree with him, but few politicians had ever had a finer moment that changed the course of history.
RIP.
Vice President J.D. Vance remembered Graham this way:
Early in my Senate tenure, I remember getting into a shouting match with Lindsey about a Ukraine funding bill at lunch and then learning the very next day that he was pushing rail legislation I really cared about behind the scenes. That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.
Lindsey had the best sense of humor in the Senate. He loved the game of politics. He was constantly asking which races were up and down, and how he could help. As he liked to say, “I don’t care if you’re an isolationist or a religious fanatic, so long as you have an R next to your name, I want you to win.”
Activist Robby Starbuck, who ran for Congress in 2022, shared this anecdote:
I had relentlessly criticized Lindsay Graham for years when I was removed from the ballot in 2022. At the time the most recent polling had me soundly winning the race for Congress.
Lindsay Graham got my phone number and called me wanting to contribute $ to my lawsuit to get back on the ballot, despite my criticism, and said it was unAmerican that people wouldn’t get the chance to vote for me.
I’m sure he would’ve voted for someone else if he lived in the district but still, he wanted people to get to vote for who they wanted to vote for and ultimately, for people told decide the election instead of a dozen people in a back room.
Commentator Ben Domenech posted a brief remembrance:
I called Lindsey Graham a dangerously insane neocon and the next time we saw each other he hugged me and said "everyone's got an opinion".
Stephen Miller, perhaps the most hardcore immigration hawk in politics today, did not hold back in praise for the senator this morning:
At the end of a particularly thrilling and rollicking meeting in the Oval Office, Lindsey Graham turned to the room and said: “I’ve never had this much fun in my life.”
I cannot describe to you how much joy President Trump’s leadership and friendship brought to Lindsey. Meetings with Graham at the White House were filled with camaraderie, kinship and uproarious laughter.
As heartbreaking as his sudden passing is, I hope it will bring some measure of comfort to those who cherished him to know just how much he was living his dream every day. Very rarely in life do you get to be exactly where you want to be, when you want to be there, with who you want to be with, doing precisely what you want to do — that was every moment for Lindsey.
The lesson here is not to hold back criticism of our elected officials. They need to hear the unvarnished truth from the people they are supposed to represent. But it’s easy to go too far, nurturing and sowing outright hatred, especially when shielded by a computer or phone screen. Death comes for us all—often unexpectedly—no matter our political positions or how loudly we screamed about them on the internet. So don't waste what time you have on chest-thumping and petty grudges. There's real work to be done.
He who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:4-10 ESV