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As condolences and remembrances of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham pour in from around the world, several themes are emerging from the South Carolina lawmaker’s life. One was that he loved his job. Graham served as a senator for 23 years and as a member of the U.S. House for eight years before that. He made politics a passion that endured shifting partisan tides and four different presidents. No matter who sat in the Oval Office, Graham made sure he was in the room, and he reached new heights with Donald Trump.

“You understand over the arc of time, just be steady, be focused. I think I deliver for the conservative cause,” Graham told me in an interview on the South Carolina campaign trail in April. “I think the longer you’re in, the more challenges you get. This would be my fifth term, you get scar tissue. You make people mad, but I trust the voters to understand that I feel that what I have to offer to South Carolina is at its highest peak.”

Graham traveled a bumpy path to get to his level of power and influence before his heart gave way on Saturday. Hours before, he was on the phone with staffers, international advisers, fellow senators, and the president of the United States.

“Trump is a political animal, and so was Lindsey Graham, and I think they really connected on that level,” Conservative Partnership Institute and former Senate staffer Rachel Bovard told RealClearPolitics. “They just enjoyed being together. They both knew that Graham wanted to get his priorities across the finish line, and he knew Trump could do it. And where they were aligned, there was no bigger advocate for the president than Graham.”

Another theme is that he cared deeply about America’s role in the global order and invested much of his time in foreign policy. After a 33-year career as an Air Force prosecutor and defense attorney, Graham believed strongly in using military power to advance American interests.

A third is that he was part of an evaporating breed of politicians: old school gentlemen who would debate and argue by day – and then crack jokes well into the night over dinner with their political opponents.

“The thing that I think was really magical about Lindsey is that he really didn’t take this stuff personally,” Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, told RCP. “You could go into a throwdown and be on the opposite side of some issue, and the next week you're talking about something you’re working together on. He was the kind of spirit around here that I’ll miss.”

Graham’s detractors often claimed he was simply a politician grasping for power, changing his policy stripes like a chameleon when it suited him. But his supporters kept electing him, endorsing him, and cutting deals with him exactly because of that. To Graham it was all part of the game.

“It’s an evolution. When you first get yelled at, it unnerves you,” Graham told me. “You’ve got to be willing to accept criticism and have some self-evaluation. Sometimes I get it wrong, but I’m just confident, confident in the people, confident that I have a good story to tell, and I’m going to tell it.”

From upstate South Carolina to Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Graham told plenty of stories.

President George W. Bush campaigned for Graham in 2002, after longtime Sen. Strom Thurmond announced his retirement leaving a rare vacancy for the state. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush said then-Congressman Graham would be a much-needed ally. 

“I’ve got a lot to do in Washington. And we need somebody who can help get that done in the United States Senate from South Carolina,” Bush told voters in Greenville. “He understands how Washington works. I want the voters of South Carolina to remember: he was for a strong military prior to September the 11th. He understood we need a strong military to defend our freedoms. He doesn’t need to be educated, once he gets to Washington, on this issue.” 

Across administrations, Graham was known as a foreign policy hawk. His critics liked to say he never met a war he didn’t support. Graham argued that he never met a country that didn’t need to know the United States’ power. When it came to international affairs, he was more a proponent of the stick than the carrot.

Graham supported the Iraq invasion in 2003 and Bush’s use of Guantanamo Bay for terrorism prisoners. His relationship with the White House changed with President Barack Obama. In 2015, Graham was one of 47 Republican senators who signed an open letter to Iranian leadership, warning them not to sign a nuclear deal with the Obama administration. What became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action removed many economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for monitoring on Iran’s nuclear program. The letter pointed out that it was an executive plan that any future president could revoke, which President  Trump subsequently did.

Did partisanship play a role? Graham’s detractors certainly thought so. When President Obama invaded Syria in 2013 without seeking congressional........

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