Posted on Sun, Jul. 02, 2006

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Graham defies easy labels

By JAMES ROSEN

jrosen@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — When Lindsey Graham first came to Congress almost a dozen years ago, he quickly became known as a Republican attack dog who helped lead the House impeachment of President Clinton.

These days, conservative activists are less enchanted with the first-term senator from South Carolina.

Graham worked with U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to boost military health-care benefits for Guardsmen and Reservists. He’s joined with U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, another Democratic scourge for many Republicans, to clamp down on China’s currency manipulation.

A former military lawyer who is still a colonel in the Air Force Reserves, Graham sometimes sits on the service’s Court of Criminal Appeals. He was an early critic of the U.S. military’s excessive interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere.

In the “Gang of 14” last year, Graham and 13 other senators from both parties prevented Republicans from trying to force rule changes in order to end Democrats’ use of the filibuster to block President Bush’s most controversial judicial nominees.

Much like his friend and mentor, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Graham disdains party-line politics and revels in his independence.

“People are always telling me what I think and why I’m doing something,” Graham said last week in an interview. “Usually, they’re just full of it.”

Graham, 50, has no time for special interest groups and politicians of any political persuasion who “want you to hate the people they hate” and cannot tolerate compromise.

“I readily look for opportunities to work with Democrats to solve problems important to my state and the nation,” he said. “If Senator Clinton is willing to come to the middle to provide better benefits for the military, I will get a car and drive her.”

HIGH PROFILE

Scarcely 41 months into his Senate term, Graham has become one of the most visible and sought-after members of Congress. A regular on the Sunday morning news shows, he is often trailed around Capitol Hill by TV camera crews and recorder-toting reporters. His office fields dozens of requests each week for interviews, speeches and other appearances.

“Lindsey Graham is a very, very smart guy, and he’s also a creative guy,” said Charlie Black, a prominent GOP consultant in Washington. “Lindsey thinks of himself as a problem solver. That’s why he’s out front and involved in a lot of things.”

Graham’s articulateness and high profile have led some political analysts to cast him as a possible 2008 presidential candidate — a job for which he adamantly denies having even the slightest interest.

Why all the attention?

“I take stands on complicated issues, and I get involved in fights that are sometimes emotional,” he said. “Hard political fights are something that I feel like I was sent here to engage in. So, if you get involved in the hard political fights every time, dealing with the tough issues, you’re going to stand out. That is part of our modern politics. And if I’m standing out in a way that people believe I could serve at the highest level of government, I think it helps my state.”

IN LINE WITH BUSH

Radio talk show hosts, conservative activists in South Carolina and outside the state, and prominent evangelical Christians, including James Dobson and the Rev. Pat Robertson, lacerated Graham last year for his willingness to compromise on judicial nominees.

Under the deal he and the rest of the Gang of 14 hammered out, Democrats agreed to allow up-or-down votes on Bush’s more conservative nominees while reserving the right to filibuster — a stalling tactic that requires 60 votes to be stopped — only in limited, extreme cases.

Despite the heat he took for his role in the compromise, Graham believes time has proved him right.

“From a Republican point of view, we have gotten judges confirmed on very close votes that had been filibustered for years,” he said. “Alito and Roberts are sitting on the Supreme Court without a filibuster. I think it was a good deal for the Senate, a good deal for President Bush and a good deal for the country.”

Even as he touts his independence, Graham says his “conservative voting record is second to none.”

Graham regularly acts on his core conservative beliefs, as he did Tuesday in voting for a constitutional amendment prohibiting desecration of the flag, which came within a vote of passing the Senate.

Graham also has stood fast with Bush on Iraq, criticizing the treatment of some detainees but supporting the broader war effort.

The senator is also more open to the reality of global warming as a serious environmental threat, an increasingly important issue for many evangelical Christians but one still resisted by Bush.

At the same time, Graham backs Bush’s more moderate approach to immigration reform, which couples stronger border protections with provisions to grant illegal workers temporary visas and even a pathway to eventual citizenship. House Republicans, backed by conservatives back home, want the border strengthened before considering other reforms.

STILL A CONSERVATIVE

The American Conservative Union, which grades lawmakers on a scale of 1 to 100 each year based on key votes, gives Graham a lifetime ranking of 91. While he points to that figure as proof of his conservative credentials, 19 Republican senators — including Jim DeMint of South Carolina at 98 — have higher numbers.

Other rating groups give Graham high conservative marks, too, though some not as high. To the extent that such comparisons are valid, Graham is less conservative than more than one-third of his Senate Republican colleagues.

“I genuinely and earnestly believe in conservative solutions to the problems facing our country, but I also genuinely and earnestly believe that the big problems of my time can never be solved without some bipartisanship,” Graham said.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster in Alexandria, Va., said Graham has a rare ability to balance ideology and practical politics.

“He has an unerring sense for what will work politically while remaining true to his principles,” Ayres said. “He is a maverick who figures out unusual ways to promote conservative policies and goals.”

Graham said he long ago gave up trying to please everyone.

“Some people are not going to like me because I won’t stand up in front of the country and spew out a bunch of hate toward my political opponents,” Graham said. “I’m just not going to build a career around that. It would hurt my state if I spent my time up here trying to cater to the meanest and nastiest people in politics.”

James Rosen covers Washington for The State and other McClatchy newspapers in South Carolina.