Maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum. (Of the dead, say nothing but good.)
Maybe Graham was a master manipulator playing the long game.Lindsey Graham humiliated himself in his final decade of life. He gave support and legitimacy to Donald Trump. He is getting remembered in many other venues with comments like this:
Lindsey Graham was a spineless sellout, a treasonous political hack, a consummate conscienceless opportunist, a prime architect of the revolting thing that the Republican Party has rolled over and become.
This is harsh, but it isn't wrong, based on the public record. Graham could have used his reputation, and the memory of his friendship with John McCain, to be a public rebuke of Trump. Graham could have been a symbol of resistance to the GOP abandoning honorable character as an essential virtue for a leader. Graham went the other way. He became famous as a weathervane who switched to become a sycophant of Trump. He became a prime example of a hypocritical, unprincipled Trump enabler.
I am trying to think if there is any shred of good in this. Maybe there is.
I suspect Graham had contempt for Trump. I suspect Graham saw himself as an undercover agent working covertly, an inside-man steering Trump away from his worst instincts. In this view of Graham, this was self-sacrifice and honor, worthy of a true friend of John McCain. Graham knew he was damaging his own legacy, becoming the butt of jokes, but did it anyway. He did it for his country. John McCain would be proud of him.
I watched Lindsey Graham for three decades. First as a senator who was a frequent guest on the Sunday shows, then up close as a presidential candidate campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina in 2015. Graham displayed hero-worship of McCain. It was a bit silly, like puppy love, but McCain had a heroic past as a prisoner of war who refused early release from confinement and torture out of solidarity with other Americans. It isn't silly to look up to a man of high character.
Graham's presidential campaign fizzled. He could only find a crowd if he joined one by stepping into a busy ice cream shop.
Lindsey Graham was a sincere foreign policy hawk. He was a proud member of the Army Reserves. The military is his tribe and identity. He wanted an America that engaged with European allies. He opposes Russia's effort to expand into Europe. He wants a military staffed by professions promoted by merit, and motivated by non-partisn, non-political patriotism.
Trump's instincts were the opposite, and Graham knew that. Trump believes large powers have every right and need to dominate their sphere of influence. That means Russia absorbs Ukraine.
Graham died having returned from Ukraine where he met with Ukraine President Vladimir Zelenskyy. Graham understood that the mechanism for having any influence on Trump was to present himself as an unwavering Trump supporter. Every Democrat who sneered at Graham was proof for Trump to see that Graham would give up every shred of dignity for Trump. Trump loves a loyal flatterer. That is the ticket to being able to tell Trump that the route to popularity at home was to support Zelenskyy, not Putin.
Does Trump listen? Maybe a little. Maybe it created the muddle of our on-again-off-again policy toward Russia and Ukraine, a muddle that would not have existed if Trump followed his own instincts. I want Ukraine to survive. Maybe Graham did some good. After all, Trump has not openly announced that he wants Russia to crush Ukraine, and then Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Then Poland.
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4 comments:
I don’t know how to react to his death as I understand his capitulation and his desire to work within for the sake of America. How far is too far in support of Donald Trump in order to have some influence? That is a question many republicans wonder about.
Interesting take on Graham as covert operative to the last, especially given his plain rebuke of Trump in 2016 as "unfit for office", then announcing "Count me out. Enough is enough" after January 6.
For me, though, Graham's repeated obeisances to Trump on TV just seemed too genuine to be acting. Same as for McCain. Perhaps Graham simply wanted or needed a dominant man to buttress.
Accepting him as head of the Republican party is too far, for all the obvious reasons. Their failure to convict him after his coup attempt was way too far.
I always appreciate your “but on the other hand” points of view. I was also a critic of Graham’s sycophancy. But maybe in private he saw himself as sacrificing his self-respect and pretended to be a Trump loyalist while subverting or at least try being an influencer to control Trumps destructive impulses in some areas. We’ll never know.
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