Lindsey Graham's Choices
The late senator knew right from wrong and did the wrong thing anyway.
Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
Lindsey Graham knew right from wrong. He just chose not to act on that knowledge.
I met Senator Graham, who died Sunday, on a handful of occasions at gatherings like the Munich Security Conference and on the Hill. We even shared a brief phone call about possible measures against the Russian regime after one such encounter—though I can’t claim an especially close relationship.
What I can say is this: Lindsey Graham and I should have shared more in common than we ultimately did.
Graham came up as a Republican of the Reagan school, an enthusiastic champion of strong American leadership in the world and support for allies like Ukraine. As a Soviet-born Russian dissident who watched the Iron Curtain fall, this was my natural orientation in foreign policy.
Graham understood the stakes well, observing much earlier than many other Americans that Vladimir Putin’s aggression was “a struggle about whether a new dividing line is drawn across Europe: between nations that are free to determine their own destinies, and nations that are consigned to the Kremlin’s autocratic orbit.”
That was in 2008. Back then, such analysis was unfashionable in Washington. Recall how, four years later, Mitt Romney, echoing Lindsey Graham, drew a condescending retort from President Barack Obama: “The 1980s are now calling and they want their foreign policy back.”
Graham, it turns out, was quite prescient about Moscow. But being right doesn’t count for much if you walk in the opposite direction.
Beyond Russia, something else that the late South Carolina senator “got” early on was Donald Trump.
In 2015, Graham sized up the future president as a “a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot.”
The following spring, he put forward an even darker assessment of the future of the Republican Party: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.”
Indeed the Republicans have been destroyed. Not electorally, but morally and institutionally.
The late South Carolina senator’s rebukes of Trump feel like dispatches from the ancient past, even though they’re only a decade old. After Trump was elected, those clear-eyed evaluations were quickly buried under thick, honey-sweet layers of flattery and appeasement.
Graham became President Trump’s most vocal ally in the Senate during both of his administrations. He would call Trump “Ronald Reagan plus,” or, depending on his mood, “Ronald Reagan plus plus plus.” Senator Graham claimed to see the light after January 6, only to come running back into MAGA’s familiar embrace.
As the age of Trump wore on, the brief, friendly interactions I had with Graham evaporated. At events where we both appeared, he seemed to be avoiding me. I don’t think the senator liked what I had to say about him and about his master in the Oval Office. Our common ground gave way to a yawning chasm.
In some respects, Graham’s story is not unique—it is the arc of every Republican who opposed Trump and subsequently got in line.
Yet some Republicans agreed with Trump’s sentiments. They simply couldn’t stomach Trump’s style. Their objections were cosmetic.
Graham was different. He was once a moderate with bipartisan instincts on issues like immigration and money in politics, and a man with strong convictions about democracy and world affairs. He had real, substantive differences with Trump. That makes his descent all the more galling.
If American support for Kyiv and other frontline allies was Graham’s animating principle, then he did tremendous damage to his own cause, leading isolationist, pro-Russian forces to the apex of their influence in Washington.
Graham died a day after returning from Ukraine. He had been pushing a new Russia sanctions bill, which his senate colleagues are now demanding move forward to honor his legacy. It’s a tragedy that, whether by providence or malicious interference (I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in KGB!), he will not be alive to see it pass. The bill, if properly executed, could have offered Graham a shot at some redemption.
It is an even greater tragedy that the enforcement of this bill, however good it may be on paper, will depend upon the most authoritarian, isolationist, pro-Russian president in American history, a president whom Lindsey Graham willingly enabled every step of the way.
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The America of my Soviet upbringing was both distant and extremely close.
History will judge the complicit. It should also audit the machine that made complicity the rational move for almost everyone in the room. Rational is not a defense. It is a diagnosis. The machine explains him. It does not absolve him, and it does not un-break what he helped break.
Johan 🐌
Garry, despite your 100% accurate criticism of Sen. Graham, you are being far too kind. History will record Graham as a sycophant of the highest order, one who sucked up to Trump and deeply damaged the US in the process. He won't be remembered for supporting Ukraine.