While I disagreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham on his support of what has been called “endless wars,” I found his presence and usually his comments on television news to be insightful and moving.
My wife and I gave money to his last re-election campaign in 2020, one of only two candidates for public office I have supported financially, the other being a friend of mine running for a local school board in Kansas.
Joe Marlow
Despite the many friends and allies mourning Graham’s passing, many celebrate his death. They include folks associated with progressive organizations such as “The Young Turks” and the vile “Lincoln Project.” But whatever one may think of the senator’s politics, his absence from the Senate brings to a close one of the most enduring and unique friendships in modern political history — The Three Amigos, which included deceased senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Ct).
The friendship of McCain, Lieberman and Graham emerged from a forge where temperament, duty and shared danger braid themselves into something like brotherhood. It was not ideological, not transactional, not even particularly strategic. It was, in the old sense of the word, “fellowship”: three men who found in one another a kind of moral and temperamental resonance that made the work bearable and sometimes even joyful.
They met, as most senators do, in committee rooms and on the Senate floor. But the real friendship was forged in the air — on military transports, in cramped briefing rooms and in the dust of war zones. Travel has a way of stripping people down to their essentials. You learn quickly who complains, who listens, who laughs, who carries themselves with steadiness when the stakes rise. McCain, Lieberman and Graham spent years in those conditions, moving from Bosnia to Baghdad to Kabul, often in the company of soldiers who had far less choice in the matter.
And somewhere in those miles, the three men discovered they shared not only policy instincts but a deeper moral grammar, a belief in duty, in sacrifice, in the burdens of leadership and in the tragic but necessary responsibilities of American power.
McCain was the center of gravity, the soul of the trio. His life already had been shaped by captivity, suffering and a fierce devotion to honor. Lieberman brought a gentler steadiness, a kind of moral clarity that was less combustible than McCain’s but no less sincere. Graham was the spark: Sharp, funny, irreverent and loyal in a way that made him indispensable.
Together they formed something like a small platoon inside the Senate — not a voting bloc, not a faction, but a fellowship of temperament.
“What made their friendship matter was not unanimity.”
Their nickname, “The Three Amigos,” began as a joke, a bit of military humor from Gen. David Petraeus. But it stuck because it captured something true. They were, in the old Western sense, riders who traveled together, argued together and defended one another. They crossed party lines not because they were moderates — they weren’t — but because friendship, once formed, became a more durable identity than party. In an age when politics already was hardening into tribalism, their bond felt almost antique.
What made their friendship matter was not unanimity. They disagreed often, sometimes sharply. But disagreement never threatened the relationship because the relationship was built on something sturdier than ideology: shared experience, shared danger, shared responsibility.
They had seen the same things, heard the same briefings, walked the same ground. They had watched young Americans carry burdens heavier than any senator’s speech. That kind of witness changes a person. It also binds them.
In the end, The Three Amigos represented a vision of political life that is increasingly rare, one in which loyalty is not a weakness, bipartisanship is not a performance and friendship is not a liability. They were flawed men, as all public servants are. But they carried themselves with a seriousness that honored the institutions they served.
And their friendship — improbable, stubborn, deeply human — stands as a reminder that even in the most divided arenas, there are still places where character recognizes character, and where the work of governing becomes, for a moment, the work of comrades.
In the movie 1776, after the contentious and emotional vote to include Pennsylvania in the list of colonies to approve independence, John Dickerson, who opposed the move, felt he could not approve of the Declaration of Independence and announced to his colleagues he was leaving Congress, On his way out, John Adams, his chief opponent, declared, “Members of Congress, I give ye John Dickinson!” To which his colleagues pounded their desks in approval.
In the same spirit, I simply announce, “My fellow Americans, I give ye Lindsey Graham!” And thank you for your life and service to our nation.
I just pounded my desk in approval, and I do hope all Americans will do the same.
Joe Marlow is a theologian, historian, educator and writer now retired in South Lyon, Mich., with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two dogs.