Lindsey Graham

The death of Senator Lindsey Graham on Saturday at his Washington, D.C. home after a “brief and sudden illness” is an enormous loss for America. The solon from South Carolina joined the upper chamber in 2002, and over a quarter of a century emerged as a champion of a principled foreign policy. Graham was at the van of those who sought to place American might behind our nation’s allies. He was a stalwart of Ukraine and Israel. President Trump, who ran against Graham in 2016 and subsequently became his friend, called the lawmaker “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.” Prime Minister Netanyahu praised him for grasping “that the security of Israel and America are inseparable.” Mr. Netanyahu adds that “Israel has lost one of its greatest friends” — and one of its most “beloved.” President Zelensky called him “a true defender of freedom.”While foreign policy was Graham’s bailiwick, he also put his stamp on the federal bench. That was during his tenure as chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee. In 2020, he presided over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the high court. Two years earlier, he was a champion of Brett Kavanaugh. He also voted to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Some 200 federal judges owe him thanks for their lifetime appointments.Graham, whose parents ran a restaurant and bar called the Sanitary Cafe — the family lived first in a room in the back, and then in a trailer nearby — was the first in his clan to graduate college. When he was just 20, his father and mother died within 15 months of each other. Graham was an Air Force lawyer who served in the Air Force Reserve. While in the Senate, he completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Graham supported the wars in both countries. Graham’s friendship with the Jewish state was of conviction. One of Mr. Netanyahu’s political opponents, the general Gadi Eisenkot, counts him among the best friends the “Jewish people have ever known.” Even as factions on the right have begun to forsake that friendship in favor of an amoral isolationism, Graham stood firm. Axios reports that when he died he was working to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Graham championed the Constitution. In 2022 he went to the Supreme Court to vindicate the parchment’s Speech or Debate Clause against efforts to force him to testify before a grand jury about the results of the 2020 presidential election. At stake was the promise to Senators and Representatives that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” He testified, but under the overhang of the privilege. Not long after the attacks of October 7, 2023, Graham sat down with the Sun’s Dovid Efune and A.R. Hoffman for an interview. He was determined to give the Jewish state the “time and space to destroy Hamas.” He called the massacres at the Negev the equivalent of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 “rolled into one.” He also spoke out against lawfare and the efforts to prosecute Mr. Trump and disqualify him from the ballot. Just days ago Graham shared images to X of Iranians at the funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei holding signs aloft with a target over the senator’s visage. Graham captioned the post “At least they used a good photo of me. Judge me by my enemies.” By that measure, Graham passed with flying colors. He was the scourge of dictators and jihadists, the cruel and corrupt. Then again, he could just as well be judged by his friends — the best of America and her allies.

Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham

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