If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.
Lindsey Graham, 2016.
I hadn't intended to post more on Lindsey Graham after my note on, well not Graham, but his dying at age 71.
Not too surprisingly, however, he was a topic of all three new shows this weekend. Meet The Press had yet another interview with Donald Trump (they've had a pile of them yesterday), on Graham. Trump claims to have spoken to him just before his death and of course, Graham was for the Stopping Americans from Voting Act that Trump hopes will pass and save his bacon this fall.
The other interviews were more interesting. I thought one of them gave a really good insight into Graham's evolution from a Trump opponent into a Trump supporter, that being pure politics. He was, the person claimed, simply play politics, basically, and by cosying up to Trump was able to influence him and get what he wanted overall.
That might be right, and is the only good explanation I've ever seen for it. The question is, at what point have you gone too far. Frankly, I think Graham went too far.
Lucien Truscott obviously feels that and has one of the most blunt applications of the Ernie Pyle Rule I've ever seen by a well known writer.*
Truscott outright states that Graham was a homosexual and betrayed his like attracted.
That brings up my first observation.
I don't know if Graham was a closeted homosexual or not, but if he was, it didn't seem to impact his votes at all. That's part of what Truscott is complaining about, but on the Twitter, the epicenter of nastiness, I've seen.
Here's the thing, however. A lot of the speculation on Graham's sexuality comes from his never marrying. He was asked about it over his lifetime and his response was that he never found the right girl, or the right girl was lucky enough never to have found him.
Anyhow, as an observation, which of course is part of what this blog does in a evolution of time fashion, merely being a single adult doesn't mean a person is a homosexual. One of my law school colleagues never married, for example, and I've known him since he was a pre teen. He's definately not same sex attracted. An older friend of mine is the same way. He's now in his 70s and has never married. He's not a homosexual, he just has a very unique personality that's operated against marriage.
If you'd asked me when I was in my late 20s, I would probably have said it wasn't going to happen. At that age I'd lost a pretty serious girlfriend and broken up with a girl was sort of serious about me, but not the other way around. Had things kept going the way they seemed to be going, and I thought at that point they definitely would be, I'd have reached the age of declining prospects pretty quickly and likely have been a single guy my whole life. I wouldn't have liked that, but it happens.
Still, most men do marry, or at least if they aren't married, you can find pretty serious love interests they've had. I've noted that above in regard to myself. Its not as if I hadn't dated at all in my 20s. It's odd for somebody to have no friends of the opposite sex who they're interested in that way, but it does happen.
The opposite also happens, I'd note. One of my high school friends was undoubtedly a homosexual, but he did marry a girl. They divorced and he died quite young. If you read his obituary it doesn't say of what, but I suspect I know.
Anyhow, I don't care if Graham was a homosexual at all and as it wasn't an open part of his life, and he didn't make it some sort of big political deal, I don't know why it matters.
On a finale note, the current Wyoming election season features one man who is an open homosexual but doesn't work that into his campaign. One of his opponents is like Graham, there's no known female friends at all that have ever popped up, which raises questions if you are campaigning on the far edge of the far right. And, fwiw, Wyoming has had one very good state office holder in the past who was a homosexual, while it never came out, and there's questions about a well known political figure as well.
The rest of Truscott's article, I'd note, is really blunt. And Graham may deserve the application of Pyle's rule.
Public Interest wasn't much kinder:
Their article stated:
Lindsey Graham died a coward. His three-decade career in national politics should be remembered for more than his shameless, pusillanimous capitulations — but not, unfortunately, for some noble pursuit or purpose he used his chameleon-like political skills to secure. He should instead be remembered for using his power to bow and scrape, to change his political colors, largely if not solely in service to himself.
I guess that reminds of, in a way, of the maxim Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt. There comes a time when reform is too late. Medieval texts used to worry a great deal about the powerful dying with their sins unconfessed. Well, many regular people do. There's a lesson there.
Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic:
But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. Graham went out of his way to telegraph his closeness to the president. He played golf with Trump, made excuses for him on television, and supported him as he slowly destroyed the alliances that Graham had defended all his life, even as he undermined the institutions of democracy at home. In 2021, Graham refused to vote to convict Trump, even after he assaulted the Capitol and tried to reverse the results of the election.
Another commentator noted all of the post death accolades by members of the press who knew Graham. He was a frequent press guest, having appeared for example on Meet the Press some sixty times.
That item started off with Shakespeare, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Adam Kinzinger was much kinder, which in turn has resulted in Kinzinger being attacked on Twitter.
Ann Telnaes ran a series of her political cartoons.
In short, the "legacy media" was kind to Graham and his legacy. The print and pundit media, not so much.
In my view, he probably didn't deserve much respect. The thing he should be remembered that he did best was rising to the occasion of his father's death (his mother had died less than a year prior) and raising his 13 year old sister.
On that, I noted here the other day that his father was 69 years old when he died. My comments on age got some shocked rebukes in other quarters. "71 isn't old".
Yes it is.
Just looking at the social history aspect of this for a second, Graham was apparently 21 when his father died. That would have meant that his father 48 years old when Graham was born, old to be a father.
Florence James "F.J." Graham was married to Millie Waters. She was 52 when she died in 1977. Graham's sister was only 13 when he died, meaning that their father was 56 when she was born, very old to become a father. Their mother was was approximately 33 when Lindsey was born, and approximately 41 when she was. 41 is quite old to have a child for a women. I don't know when they married, but there was an age gap of about ten years there, which isn't that uncommon. More uncommon is that they apparently married sort of late with the mother in her very early 30s, or they had a hard time having children.
Some Twitter Twits have absolutely freaked out about his dying, attributing it to a conspiracy. Complete nonsense.
By the way, Sam Neal died yesterday at 79, 8 years older than Graham. James Van Der Beek at 48. Catherine O'Hara at 71.
Trump, in an interview, said several times "I thought he would live forever". He claims to have told Graham that several times, but with Trump, you can never tell if that's true. That probably says more about Trump than Graham.
Graham came up during the Reagan era. Reagan remains the huge hero to conservatives, but more and more he doesn't deserve to be. It was Reagan who caused the sweep of old Dixiecrats into the GOP which has lead to its ultimate destruction. I can't say that Graham was a Dixiecrat, but I will note that he was endorsed early on by Strom Thurmond, who most definitely was.
Graham had been a major supporter of the US effort in Afghanistan and he was a big supporter of Ukraine. I agree with him on both of those things . Ironically, given how close Graham was to Trump, it was Afghanistan that really started the riff between Liz Cheney and Trump which lead to Harriet Hageman.
After January 6, Graham appeared to briefly find his moral ground. For a few weeks there it looked as if Trump might be impeached. Graham lead a speech from the floor that absolutely condemned what happened and implicitly condemned Trump. Like most of the GOP, however, he went back to Trump boot licking. That will be his legacy.
Well, legacies matter I suppose to the living, and for a reason. For the dead, they're beyond that.
May the perpetual light shine upon him.
Footnotes:
*Ernie Pyle, the famous World War Two reporter, once reported on troops reaction to having to pack a dead lieutenant they didn't like out of the Italian hills on a mule A Sergeant stated "Son of a bitch alive, son of a bitch dead".
Related thread:
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