Let’s All Stop for a Moment to Consider a President Lindsey Graham

Heads up, potential Republican
presidential candidates! Start working on that war-mongering. If
you’re not hawkish enough, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
will jump in to show you how it’s done.

The Weekly Standard got the exclusive in an interview
with the senator for a recent magazine piece titled “The Return of
the GOP Hawks,” subtitled “Not that they ever really left.” And
since this is The Weekly Standard, the not-very-subtextual
unstated second subtitle is “Yaaaaaay!”

Even though Sen. John McCain was trounced in 2008 by a war-weary
public, some conservatives, neo or otherwise, seem to think there’s
new life in the calling for intervention today, intervention
tomorrow, and intervention forever. According to The Weekly
Standard, McCain told Graham to
consider running:

In our interview, Graham repeatedly spoke of the challenges that
will face the next president because of the mistakes made under
Obama. And he suggested that he might just be the one to fix
them.

“If I get through my general election, if nobody steps up in the
presidential mix, if nobody’s out there talking​—​me and McCain
have been talking​—​I may just jump in to get to make these
arguments,” Graham said.

I asked Graham about [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio. Hasn’t he been
making many of the arguments you’d be likely to make? Graham wasn’t
impressed. “He’s a good guy, but after doing immigration with
him—we don’t need another young guy not quite ready,” said Graham.
“He’s no Obama by any means, but he’s so afraid of the right, and
I’ve let that go.”

So Graham could run as the next McCain, but without the
charisma, or an alternative to Rubio, but without the youthful
appeal or energy (or charisma). But who can resist the charms of a
presidential candidate who believes that
ISIS is coming to kill us all, each and every one of us? Who
can better instill the belief in American Exceptionalism than the
guy who keeps screaming about monsters under the bed?

Read the full story
here. Lindsey Graham coverage and occasional mockery in our
Reason archives here.