Swing conservative: the perilous bipartisanship of Lindsey Graham.

• Author: Earle, Geoff
• Position: Cover Story - Biography

Once news of the abuse at Abu Ghraib broke last April, it took just four days for the Senate Armed Services Committee to summon Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to testify. It took about five seconds after that for the committee's Democrats to start licking their chops. Take down the president's defense secretary, the conventional wisdom held, and Bush's standing as a wartime leader--and, presumably, the campaign resting squarely upon it--would crumble. Democrats wouldn't even have to do the dirty work because there was a Republican on the committee who was known to dislike Rumsfeld as much as any Democrat. And not just any Republican, but the most popular member of his party in the country and perhaps the only politician whose credibility on military issues overshadowed Rumsfeld's: Sen.John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Every sign pointed towards a knockout blow by McCain. Because of his experience as a Vietnam POW, the Arizona Republican had every reason to be incensed by evidence that U.S. personnel had tortured captured Iraqis. With Democrats calling for the secretary's resignation, any public show of lost confidence from McCain might mortally wound the secretary's chances of surviving the scandal. Before the hearing, McCain was spotted chatting amiably with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N-Y.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee's senior Democrat, and the cognoscenti nodded at what was certainly a sign of cooperation to come. Moreover, because all three major networks were broadcasting the hearings live, the whole country could watch.

But if Democrats were expecting McCain to pin responsibility for Abu Ghraib on the defense secretary, they were soon disappointed. When it was time for McCain to question Rumsfeld, he merely jabbed testily, focusing on the minutiae of the scandal, such as who was in charge of the interrogations and what their instructions had been. There were flashes of McCain's well-known temper, particularly when he insisted that Rumsfeld--not his subordinates--answer his questions. But the only noteworthy moment was a comical one: The secretary and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers realized that the chart illustrating the chain of command had been left back at the Pentagon. ("Oh my," mumbled Rumsfeld. '"Oh my' is right," replied Myers.) After McCain finished, the hearing quickly settled into a predictable groove with some Republicans minimizing the scandal as the work of a few bad apples and Democrats offering stern lectures.

Then Chairman John Warner (R-.Va.) turned the floor over to Lindsey Graham, a boyish-looking Republican from South Carolina barely a year into his first term filling the Senate seat of Strom Thurmond after eight years in the House. Graham won his Senate seat with a pledge to support the president's war on terror and since taking office he had been a steady advocate of the Iraq War. Unlike McCain, he had never taken issue with the Pentagon's leadership. There was little reason for Rumsfeld to believe that Graham's questions would be much different from those of any other Republican.

Graham had other ideas. Dispensing with the time-wasting custom of an introductory statement, Graham launched straight into an interrogation. After putting Rumsfeld on his heels with a question about an unreleased video depicting torture, Graham cut straight to the chase. "Secretary Rumsfeld, people are calling for your resignation.... Do you have the ability, in your opinion, to come to Capitol Hill and carry the message and carry the water for the Department of Defense? Do you believe, based on all the things that have happened and that will happen, that you're able to carry out your duties in a bipartisan manner?"

It was the first time all hearing anyone had even uttered the word "resignation," and Rumsfeld shifted in his seat. "Well, it's a fair question. Um." Rumsfeld paused, before starting an uncharacteristically clumsy stall. "Certainly since this firestorm has been raging it's a question that I've given a lot of thought to. [Pause] The key question for me is the one you posed, and that is whether or not I can be effective. [Pause] Uh, we've got tough tasks ahead. [Pause] The [pause] people in the [pause] department [pause] military and civilian [pause] are doing enormously important work here [pause] uh, and in countries all over the world. And [pause] the, the issue is, uh, can [pause] I [pause] be effective in assisting them in their important tasks." Finally, Rumsfeld found the answer he had been looking for. "Needless to say, if I felt I could not be effective, I'd resign in a minute. [Eight-second pause.] I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it."

That night, Grahams questioning of Rumsfeld was shown on all three networks' evening news broadcasts, and made the front pages of the next day's New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. On Sunday, it was Graham, not McCain, who appeared on "Meet the Press" alongside Warner, Levin, and Gen. Wesley Clark. (McCain was relegated to the third-tier "FOX News Sunday.") A few days later, The New York Times ran a story on Grahams role entitled, "Senator's Pointed Questions Get to the Heart of the Matter."

Since last summer, Graham has felt increasingly free to stray from party doctrine and reach across the aisle on key issues. Last month, he signaled that he would not support the extension of some of the president's tax cuts. And in his biggest role so far, Graham is now attempting to win moderate Democratic support for a version of Social-Security reform legislation that would combine private accounts with an increase in the cap on payroll taxes. Grahams freelancing has given rise to a joke making the rounds of South Carolina's political circles that even with the retirement of Fritz Hollings, "We have a Democratic senator--Lindsey Graham." To some, it's more than a joke. Dick Harpootlian, who chaired the South Carolina State Democratic Party when Graham ran for the Senate, recently sent the GOP senator a $1,000 campaign donation.

Democrats used to reserve this kind of affection for moderates. But Lindsey Graham is no moderate. He came to Washington as a Newt Gingrich acolyte, served as a House manager of President Bill...