The Middle Man

By Anna Mitchell  

JANUARY 16, 2010 6:31 p.m. (0)

Lindsey Graham didn’t get into politics to hate his political opponents.

And he doesn’t intend to apologize for his friendship with the late Ted Kennedy.

With folksy humor and conversational explanations of sometimes complex points of international economics, healthcare, environmental and energy policy and entitlement programs, Graham has found himself in recent months repeatedly defending – at times angrily – why he has reached out to liberal figures such as Kennedy, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton to win conservatives a seat at the table.

Most famously, Kerry trotted down to Graham’s office earlier this year and asked if he could get some help hashing out an energy and environmental policy bill palatable to conservatives. Their negotiations led to, among other things, a joint op-ed piece in The New York Times focused on reaching across the aisle for solutions to climate change and energy independence.

Graham has gained nominal Democratic support for expanded nuclear power, offshore drilling and subsidies in South Carolina for wind and solar energy. In return, Graham also agreed in spirit to taxes on carbon emissions (also known as “cap and trade”) – an unforgivable sin among those on the right.

His ultimate goal, he said, is to tackle the nation’s toughest problems.

“Why should I expect somebody else to come along and do things I’m not willing to do?” he said.

Censure votes in recent months by Republican parties in Charleston and Lexington counties have cited his support for cap-and-trade, the federal financial services bailout and a failed 2007 immigration bill that would have given 12 million people here illegally a path to legal status.

“He was basically aligning himself with a lot of liberal causes in contravention with direct language of the South Carolina GOP platform,” said Rich Bolen, chairman of the Lexington County GOP.

Faced with an overwhelming majority of Democrats in the Senate, Graham said he has no choice but to engage in dialogue. A censure vote by 13 people in the Midlands, he said, was not enough to discourage him.

“I think I am in the coalition-building wing of the party,” he said. “Conservatism is an asset. The country is center right. But most people in the country are expecting parties to solve problems rather than just tear the other side down.”

Meanwhile, his voting record for the most recent rankings in 2008 earned him a score of 82 by the American Conservative Union (ahead of 84 other senators). Out of 25 key conservative issues, he voted against the ACU position four times (he favored one-time taxpayer refunds, the Fannie Mae bailout, farm subsidies and the financial services bailout).

Clemson University professor Dave Woodard said he has recent data showing Graham has drawn negative responses from almost two out of five people contacted for the poll.

“When disagreements get into the high 30s, usually you find an incumbent is vulnerable,” Woodard said. “A challenger only needs 10 more percent to beat you.”

Washington Post columnist and Georgetown University public policy professor E.J. Dionne said he has a hard time seeing how anyone could view Graham as too liberal, notwithstanding Dionne’s own liberal Massachusetts upbringing.

“Lindsey Graham is in the position of playing the role that John McCain used to play as the go-to Republican for Democrats in search for compromise,” Dionne said. “But given how conservative their party has become, it’s much more politically risky, it’s even more politically risky, to play that role now than it was for John McCain five or six years ago.”

Graham’s personal story is well known – the bachelor son of a downtown Central bar owner; an orphan at 21 who adopted his teenaged sister so she could get healthcare; the Air Force lawyer who serves as a colonel in the reserves.

Running his dad’s basement pool hall while still in grade school gave him his knack for diplomacy, he says. His father, “Dude” Graham, was also a very funny man, he said.

He laughs as he tells the story of one regular, Fred, who tried to avoid a call from his wife one night. “He said he’s not here,” Graham told the angry spouse.

Watching his underinsured mother cope with Hodgkin’s disease in 1975 – a disease that killed her in six months and wiped out the family financially – showed him the need for insurance reform, he says. The Social Security survivor benefits his sister would receive demonstrated the role government must sometimes play.

And the law, he said, especially defending airmen against the U.S. government showed him the importance of standing up for the little guy.

Graham, now 54, rose to national prominence 12 years ago after positioning himself as a House prosecutor during the Clinton impeachment.

“He certainly put a working man’s aspect on what went on in the White House,” said Katon Dawson, a Graham friend, law school colleague and former GOP chairman for South Carolina. “He said exactly what he thought it was: ‘Anything going on past two in the morning in South Carolina is not good.’”

Another oft quoted Grahamism: “Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?”

Dawson said Graham’s voting record is solidly conservative – if not as conservative as first-in-the-Senate Jim DeMint. Those who are critical of Graham don’t understand the senator’s tactics go beyond the next election cycle, he said, and complement DeMint’s harder edge (though they almost always vote the same way).

“Lindsey is just a good politician that understands the state of South Carolina, the national climate, is intellectually smart and politically savvy,” Dawson said, “and he has the political hide of a South Georgia alligator and is willing to take a whipping.”

Scott Malyerck, past chairman of the Lexington County GOP, said Graham is taking a lesson from Ronald Reagan, who once worked with House Speaker and Democrat Tip O’Neil to save Social Security from bankruptcy. Support runs deep for Graham, he said and cited his 68 percent take of the vote in the 2008 primary despite an opponent from Lexington County.

“We had a senator named Strom Thurmond who was there almost 50 years,” Malyerck said. “He did a lot of constituent service, but can you name one piece of legislation he sponsored?”

Asked during a town hall meeting in Clemson this week why he supported the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Graham said it was part of his effort to return to the old way of doing business in the Senate. In 1993 Strom Thurmond voted for the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg (she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU), as did 96 other senators.

Graham was a member of the Gang of 14 Senate coalition in 2005, which included McCain, to prevent a Democratic filibuster of Bush nominees to the federal bench. He said he looks forward to the day he can return to Democratic colleagues in that gang and ask for their vote.

“There are some people in politics it’s not enough that you agree with them on the issue,” Graham told the Journal before the meeting. “You have to hate what they hate. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to live life that way.”