Audio By Carbonatix

There might be senators who’ve had more zest for the job than Lindsey Graham, but we can’t think of one.

The South Carolina senator, who died suddenly last night at age 71, was a fierce advocate for what he believed. He took advantage of any forum available to him — whether the Senate cloakroom, committee hearing rooms, or TV studios — to push for whatever he thought was right.

We had our disagreements with him over the years, particularly over his persistent support for “comprehensive immigration reform,” but there was never any doubt about his intelligence or energy.

He was famously an interventionist, sometimes to a fault. The bedrock of his foreign policy was an abiding and correct belief in the goodness and efficacy of American power. He supported the U.S. alliance system and promoted democracy abroad. He was a steadfast friend of embattled allies Ukraine and Israel, and an unremitting enemy of tyrants of every coloration.

That his foreign policy was increasingly out of fashion in a GOP with a growing isolationist wing didn’t faze him, and through his relationship with Donald Trump, he won many internal GOP battles.

He was also a committed pro-lifer, a constitutionalist, and an advocate of limited government. When he got his teeth into an issue, few were as dogged or effective. He turned in a particularly memorable performance defending Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

Graham had a large pragmatic streak. He was always looking for the maneuver or deal that would best advance the ball. This is what brought him to his accommodation with Trump. After denouncing him in harsh terms in 2016, he became a confidante and golfing buddy of the president’s, constantly trying to bend Trump his way. Graham would occasionally dissent in public but otherwise did everything necessary to preserve the relationship and found himself defending conduct that surely would have appalled him a few years earlier.

Graham, of course, knew the importance of staying on Trump’s good side for sheer electoral reasons. On top of everything else, he was a sure-footed pol, who trod an independent path on issues while never losing touch with his South Carolina voters. They sent him to Washington repeatedly over the course of three decades, first to the House in 1994 and then to the Senate beginning in 2002.

His death is a loss to the Senate and to those conservative causes to which he was devoted. Graham forged a political career that mattered, and he did it with great verve. R.I.P.