IT’S AN IRONY that Lindsey Graham might have appreciated. While everyone on Capitol Hill and beyond was fixated on the Mitch McConnell ‘is he dead/alive/brain-dead and can we just make sure he hangs on until 3 August’ nail-biter, the 71-year-old South Carolina senator provided a welcome distraction – for McConnell at least – with his sudden death.

You might even say he did McConnell, his former longtime Senate buddy a final favour by shifting the media glare and increasingly trenchant proof of life demands away from the ailing Kentucky Senator.

Graham never missed an opportunity to hog the headlines or ingratiate himself with a reporter.

His quicksilver persona – mischievous, gossipy and garrulous – belied a self-serving ruthlessness that invariably placed self-promotion over substance, political expedience over principle.

By his own account, he learned the value of a friendly demeanour and a ready quip at an early age, growing up in a dive bar and pool hall in a working-class town in South Carolina. “If you kept ‘em laughing, you’d keep ‘em drinking.” As a politician he was always happy to sing for his supper, provided it came with a seat at the best table.

In his pre-Trump iteration, Graham was one of the most popular figures in the Senate and one of the most bipartisan. He counted Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, Chris Coons and half a dozen other Democratic Senators as friends. In the early mid 2000s, he and his close friend and mentor John McCain supported attempts to pass legislation on traditionally liberal issues like immigration and climate change.

He was a fixture at every Capitol Hill gathering of import, Republican or Democrat. The first time I met him, during a reception hosted by Ted Kennedy, then the most powerful Senator on Capitol Hill, he insisted that I call him Lindsey. He looked around and spotting John Kerry nearby, leant in and confided with a chuckle; “now that one over there, even his own family has to call him Senator.”

Graham with John McCain in 2013. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Always anxious to burnish his credentials as a foreign policy wonk and statesman, he underscored his support for the Northern Ireland Peace Process during every conversation. He never joined the bipartisan Friends of Ireland congressional........

© TheJournal