Lindsey Olin Graham was born in Central, South Carolina, where his parents, Millie (Walters) and Florence James "F.J." Graham, ran a restaurant/bar/pool hall/liquor store, the Sanitary Cafe. His family is of Scots-Irish descent. After graduating from D. W. Daniel High School, Graham became the first member of his family to attend college, and joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. When he was 21, his mother died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, aged 52, and his father died 15 months later of a heart attack, aged 69. Because his then-13-year-old sister was left orphaned, the service allowed Graham to attend the University of South Carolina in Columbus so he could remain near home as his sister's legal guardian. During his studies, he became a member of the Pi Kappa Phi social fraternity.
He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in psychology in 1977, and from the University of South Carolina School of Law with a J.D. in 1981 (Lindsey 2).
Friends and relatives credit Graham's plain speaking and wry humor to his father, F.J. Graham -- the proprietor of the oddly named Sanitary Cafe, a combination restaurant-bar-liquor store-pool hall in Central, S.C. (pop. 2,000). Lindsey's mother, Millie, was a savvy businesswoman who cooked hamburgers and served Cokes behind the counter while F.J. -- for Florence James -- generally presided over things. The elder Graham, a barrel-chested man with a crew cut and a dry wit, was known around town as "the Dude."
"My dad was a hoot," Graham says. "Being 5 foot 7 inches and full of a mouth, you got to really stay on your toes. . . . This is a textile town. My dad never finished high school and neither did my mom. And we had a restaurant/bar and later on he got a liquor store next door and a pool hall downstairs and as a young guy I ran the pool hall. I've heard every story and then some. But at 3 o'clock in the afternoon the first shift would get off from the mill and people would come in just full of cotton and dust and they'd drink beer till midnight. And I've heard 'Satin Sheets to Lie On and Satin Pillows to Cry On' a thousand times."
Graham says he doesn't drink, probably because alcohol consumption has never held any exotic allure for him. "I've seen the bad side of drinking. I've seen a lot of drunks throwing up," he says. "A small-town community bar is what it was. I know what it's like to be thought of as the kid of the guy that owned the bar -- and everybody's so sanctimonious -- so I took all that stuff in stride. So it was a great place to learn about life. I had wives call up wanting to know if their husband's there and I'm answering the phone at 9 years of age. And I'd say, 'Well, he said he isn't here.' So I learned the hard way about a little bit of diplomacy. But it was a great upbringing."
…
You assume everything's going to be like Ozzie and Harriet," Graham says. "That doesn't mean it's going to happen that way. So here I've got a teenager on my hands. She's turned out great in spite of me. I was probably a nut. I never let her date. I smelled her clothes if she smoked. I listened in on her phone calls. I was probably pressing too hard, just 'cause I felt such responsibility for her. I paid for her college and I did all the financial deals when I got in the Air Force. I thought that was my job and I felt very happy to have done it. She is the light of my life."
…
After obtaining his law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1981, he joined the Air Force's Judge Advocate General staff, spending four years as a prosecutor and defense attorney in Europe.
"One, he was very intelligent, and two, he understands people," says Air Force Maj. Gen. Bryan Hawley, who was chief trial judge for Europe when he saw Capt. Graham work in courts-martial. "He has more common sense than I do."
In 1984, defending an Air Force pilot accused of marijuana use, Graham attracted national attention when he was featured in a CBS "60 Minutes" report that exposed the Air Force's faulty drug-testing procedures.
Graham recalls his Air Force tour as terrific fun for a young bachelor swinging his way through Paris and Rome. "Don't believe anything anybody tells you about my Air Force exploits," jokes Graham, still unhitched and a roommate of Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), another single guy. "I was very heterosexual, that's all you need to know."
He returned home to the more sedate life of a small-town trial lawyer in Seneca amid the cotton mills of western South Carolina (Grove 2-4).
In 1992, Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from the 2nd district, in Oconee County. He defeated Democratic incumbent Lowell W. Ross by 60% to 40% and served one term, from 1993 to 1995.
In 1994, 20-year incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Butler Derrick of South Carolina's northwestern-based 3rd congressional district decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and, with Republican U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond campaigning on his behalf, won the Republican primary with 52% of the vote, defeating Bob Cantrell (33%) and Ed Allgood (15%). In the general election, Graham defeated Democratic State Senator James Bryan Jr., 60% to 40%. As a part of that year's Republican Revolution, Graham became the first Republican to represent the district since 1877.
In 1996, he was challenged by Debbie Dorn, the niece of Butler Derrick and daughter of Derrick's predecessor, 13-term Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn. Graham was reelected, defeating Dorn 60% to 40% (Lindsey 3)
Graham -- whose middle-aged spread and laid-back manner cushion knifelike intelligence and a sizzling ambition -- has been something of a firebrand during his career on Capitol Hill. He took part in last year's abortive coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), staged by Young Turks exasperated with Gingrich's tendency to unilaterally compromise with the White House. More recently, he stood on the House floor and scolded a deeply annoyed Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the pork-rich Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, about the evils of budget-busting (Grove 5).
January 26, 1998
"I want you to listen to me. I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never," an angry President Clinton declares to an invited media audience at the White House.
…
August 17, 1998
Bill Clinton testifies in the grand jury, acknowledging "inappropriate intimate contact" with Ms Lewinsky. But he insists the evidence he gave to the [Paula] Jones case in January suit had been accurate.
...
October 8, 1998
The House of Representatives vote for impeachment proceedings to begin against Clinton. The House judiciary committee will be given wide powers to draw up detailed charges against Mr Clinton, based on 11 allegations by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair (Barkham 2-3).
"Everybody is sick to death of this!" Lindsey Graham says in his country-lawyer twang. "Count me in that category."
He's a partisan Republican from South Carolina. When he landed in Congress with the revolutionary shock troops of 1994, ending four decades of Democratic rule, he was intent on cleansing the body politic of all traces of big-government liberalism. But at least in one respect, Graham's views on the impeachment ordeal are surprisingly compatible with President Clinton's.
He's a very junior member of the House Judiciary Committee -- 20th among 21 Republicans -- but the 43-year-old Graham has positioned himself, for now, as the panel's preeminent voice of reason. It's the singular, humorous and highly quotable voice of a former Air Force prosecutor who grew up helping out in his father's saloon. In a world where media exposure often equals power, Graham is claiming star status and a share of influence with his uncanny gift for the camera-ready aphorism.
"Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" Graham declared at Monday's historic hearing -- cutting to the heart of the matter (and through the clutter of 36 other opening statements) as the Judiciary Committee launched its impeachment inquiry. Yesterday's New York Times, for one, enshrined Graham's incisive question in a four-column headline. In its loopy way, the quip recalls former Tennessee senator Howard Baker's much graver challenge during Watergate: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Graham's droll touch suggests that unlike many in the GOP, he believes that the current White House scandal is not necessarily a constitutional crisis. In a process sharply polarized by cultural values and ideology, he has served as an occasional bridge between warring factions, sometimes even voting with the Democrats, as he did last week on whether to release further embarrassing details of Clinton's escapades with Monica Lewinsky. Temporarily joining the losing side, Graham voted no. He is also the sole committee Republican to have publicly countenanced the possibility of censure -- a solution the White House dearly desires as a way of preempting an impeachment trial.
"The other scenario is that this guy just has a problem and he can't control himself and it's about human failings and censure is appropriate. We don't need to turn the country upside down," Graham ad-libbed on Monday (while every other committee member clung for dear life to a text). "Nobody can tell me yet whether this is part of a criminal enterprise or a bunch of lies which build upon themselves based on not wanting to embarrass your family. If that's what it is, about an extramarital affair with an intern, and that's it, I will not vote to impeach this president no matter if 82 percent of the people back home want me to, because we will destroy this country."
…
… Graham says he's not particularly swayed by the president's verbal contortions in the effort to explain his misleading testimony about the affair with Lewinsky.
"What I want to make sure I do," he says, "is pull back and understand: What is this all about? Not just the minutiae of who touched who, where and all that kind of stuff. If it truly is just about the president telling one lie that compounded itself to another lie that was even harder to believe, going from one stupid story to a goofy story to an unbelievable story where he tried to get his friends to follow him -- well, I'm not willing to overturn the election for that."
On the other hand, Clinton shouldn't take too much comfort in Graham's apparent open-mindedness. Graham, after all, was one of only 19 sponsors of last year's then-controversial impeachment inquiry resolution. He says he's especially troubled by evidence -- such as the grand jury testimony of perennial Clinton adviser Dick Morris -- suggesting that Clinton operatives have regularly intimidated "Jane Does" to keep mum about their affairs with the president. Morris called these people -- who the White House contends simply don't exist -- Clinton's "secret police" (Grove 1-2, 5).
On October 8, 1998, Graham voted in favor of legislation to open an impeachment inquiry. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, which conducted the inquiry. In both the Judiciary Committee vote on forwarding articles of impeachment, and the full House vote on those articles of impeachment, Graham voted for three of the four articles of impeachment. He voted against the second count of perjury in the Paula Jones case. This made him the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to vote against any of the articles of impeachment. During the inquiry, Graham asked, "Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" The House passed two of the impeachment articles. Graham served as an impeachment manager in the impeachment trial.
...
In 2002, longtime U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and won the Republican primary unopposed. In the general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Alex Sanders, the former President of the College of Charleston and former Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, 600,010 votes (54%) to 487,359 (44%). Graham thus became South Carolina's first new U.S. senator since 1965 (Lindsey 5, 6).
Graham once told me that he was fascinated by “people who can handle fear and do brave, difficult things.” He was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — “If you wanted to have a Martin Luther King Month, it would be fine with me” — but could just as easily have been talking about [John] McCain, a former P.O.W. Their friendship grew out of McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, when Congressman Graham threw his support behind McCain during the ugly South Carolina primary, and defiantly stuck with him even after his state went for George W. Bush. As a newly elected senator, Graham relied on McCain to show him the ropes. His foreign policy and immigration positions were soon indistinguishable from those of his mentor (Draper 3).
It all started years ago, during the push for then-President Bill Clinton's impeachment, when Lindsey Graham, then a House member, was presenting the case to senators, including Arizona's Sen. John McCain.
"Congressman Graham, on the most solemn occasion, said, 'You know, where I come from, any man calling a woman at 2 a.m. is up to no good,'" McCain said in March of 2017, explaining the history of their friendship on CNN. "I knew right then that Lindsey Graham was a guy I wanted to spend time with."
It was a friendship that would remain strong to the very end. …
…
The two men hit the campaign trail together in 2000, during McCain's first presidential bid for the GOP nomination. That race didn't go McCain's way, but when South Carolina voters promoted Graham to Congress' upper chamber in 2003, they collaborated on legislation that would have major impacts on foreign policy. Their Senate gang once included now-former Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Democrat-turned-independent, until his retirement announcement in 2012. They were, "the three Amigos." When Lieberman left the Senate, that trio became a duo (Watson 1).
“McCain was the central figure, really, of the three of us,” Lieberman told ABC News in a recent interview.
Over his time in the Senate, McCain formed a close working relationship with Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Graham, the longtime Republican from South Carolina.
They staked their claim as prominent hawkish voices on foreign policy, an issue that took them on travels around the globe and led to the cultivation of a long-lasting friendship that lasted beyond the halls of the Senate.
“We’ve traveled the world together. I’ve seen these guys in action. I’ve learned a lot from both of them and we had so much fun,” Graham told ABC News. …
“The time really to get to know your colleagues is when you were fortunate enough to travel with them somewhere because you were on the plane together, you were talking, you were reading,” Lieberman, whom McCain even considered naming as his running mate during his 2008 presidential campaign, said. “That’s when I first found out of McCain’s love of Hemingway.”
After the 9/11 attacks, the trio made routine visits to Afghanistan and Iraq. It was on one of those trips when General David H. Petraeus gave the nickname to the triumvirate, which became vocal proponents of President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy in Iraq.
“They were the three amigos. They were three inseparable friends,” Petraeus told ABC News. “At some point, I just started saying we had the three amigos coming in again” (Saenz 1-2).
Works cited:
Saenz, Arlette. “Inside John McCain's 'Three Amigos' Friendship.” ABC News, August 26, 2018. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/inside-john-mccains-amigos-friendship/story?id=57392266
Barkham, Patrick. “Clinton Impeachment Timeline.” The Guardian, November 18, 1998. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/nov/18/clinton.usa
Draper, Robert. “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/magazine/04graham-t.html
Grove, Lloyd. “Lindsey Graham, a Twang of Moderation.” Washington Post, October 7, 1998. Net. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/graham100798.htm
“Lindsey Graham.” Wikipedia. Net. https://www.google.com/search?q=Lindsey+Graham&cref=&ie=utf-8&hl=&submit=Search
Watson, Kathryn. “The Lasting Friendship of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.” CBS News, August 25, 2018. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-storied-friendship-of-john-mccain-and-lindsey-graham/
No comments:
Post a Comment