Four-term South Carolina U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly over the weekend at the age of 71, with no evident warning. His abrupt departure from this earth takes away one of the more influential and controversial figures of the Trump era at a particularly inconvenient moment for his allies in the Senate and his frenemies in the administration.

Graham leaves a dual legacy in his wake. Like the southern congressional barons of the past, he accumulated considerable power in the Senate via seniority and the force of his personality. In the tradition of his home state, which bears a large Pentagon spending footprint and a culture of belligerency, his principal focus was on national security. He was a relentless defense hawk, barely changing his views when the aggressive global interventionism of the Reagan and Bush administrations gave way to the peculiar America First policies associated with Donald Trump. When he died, he was characteristically right in the middle of two prime national security-associated challenges: an effort to salvage the U.S. alliance with Ukraine, and a drive to get a historic boost in defense spending through a closely divided Congress. Both these Graham priorities were in some trouble in Washington, but he was using his surprisingly close relationship with the president to make progress, as evidenced by his phone call with Trump just an hour before emergency vehicles were summoned to his home.

Transcending his orthodox conservative policy views on defense and such cultural issues as abortion, however, was an outsized personality that always attracted attention. Graham first achieved national fame as a House member in 2000, when he championed his friend John McCain’s presidential nomination campaign in his state’s crucial primary (right after McCain demolished George W. Bush in New Hampshire and panicked the coalition of the Republican Establishment and movement conservatives backing the Texas governor). Graham was outspokenly horrified by the successful smears aimed at McCain — but you get the sense the experience made him more amenable to hardball political tactics.

Still, in part because of his long association with McCain, along with McCain-aligned heretical positions on immigration reform and even climate........

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