Washington bid farewell Tuesday to a rare partisan peacemaker, with memorial services celebrating the exceptional life of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
With his coffin draped in the American flag, congressional colleagues gathered in the Capitol’s rotunda to remember the man who made them rethink positions, made them laugh and, most of all, made them connect with one another.
“There was no one that took a job more seriously than Lindsey Graham,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. “But also, no one was more capable of cracking up a room.”
Mr. Graham was 71 when he passed away on July 11 from a heart emergency, suddenly and tragically ending more than three decades in Congress, including more than 20 years as a senator from South Carolina.
His seat has been filled by his sister, Darline Graham, but colleagues said his presence in the chamber cannot be replaced.
“Lindsey was a towering figure here in the Senate and on the international stage,” said Mr. Thune, South Dakota Republican.
Mr. Graham was an acolyte of the late Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and fellow defense hawk. They shared a willingness to buck their party, and an ability to forge legislation across party lines, with campaign finance, immigration legislation and military policy as particular interests for both men.
In the second term of President George W. Bush, it was McCain and Mr. Graham who pushed the administration into the second troop surge in Iraq, which helped stabilize the troubled nation’s security situation.
After McCain’s death, Mr. Graham emerged as the most prominent hawk in the Senate.
Mr. Graham also gained a reputation as a sort of Trump-whisperer, able to reach the mercurial president despite some very public disagreements and differences.
He was among the proudest of pro-life lawmakers, staking out positions and pushing policies that thrilled the party’s conservatives, even as GOP strategists worried about the politics.
But he drew the ire of conservatives for his work on bills to legalize illegal immigrants and his willingness to vote for nominees of Democratic presidents.
Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama pick for the Supreme Court, credits Mr. Graham with securing her confirmation both with his vote and a classic Graham-induced moment humanizing her during her confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Graham had asked Justice Kagan what she was doing on Christmas — a question she took as a predicate for asking him about the intricacies of the criminal case against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber,” who’d attempted to bring down a plane on Christmas Day 2009.
Mr. Graham had other ideas.
“I just asked you where you were at on Christmas,” he said, smiling.
“You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant,” she replied.
Justice Kagan, in an appearance before Congress this month, said Mr. Graham accomplished a hard thing — he made her funny.
“People said to me afterward that exchange with Senator Graham was the moment my confirmation was sealed,” she said.
Vice President J.D. Vance on Tuesday said Mr. Graham sealed the confirmation of another pick, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee who was struggling after unsubstantiated accusations of a decades-old sexual assault arose.
Mr, Graham, who’d made a point in the past of supporting nominees from Democratic presidents, unleashed all of his considerable rhetorical fury on Justice Kavanaugh’s opposition, calling him a clearly qualified legal mind who was being ambushed by character assassination.
“I believe that he saved that nomination,” Mr. Vance said. “Lindsey didn’t just earn a lot of headlines, he actually persuaded people.”
