At the very beginning of the 2016 cycle, I was asked by a magazine if I wanted to profile Lindsay Graham. They thought it would be fun to assign a conservative dove to cover the conservative hawk. The profile never came to be for reasons I can’t remember. But it was an enjoyable assignment. I drove up and watched Graham work a room deep in the New Hampshire exurbs. McMansions and black SUVs everywhere.

He was smaller than I had imagined him. He drank a little more than I thought a politician should at an event like that, but it didn’t do anything but add color to his cheeks and sharpen his wit.

I followed him back to his hotel and sat down for drinks and a brief dinner with him and a member of his staff. He very quickly ascertained from my questions that I was more in the Rand Paul or Pat Buchanan school of foreign policy. He didn’t back down an inch, but leaned in to debate things like the Saudi war in Yemen with relish, and not a little bit of detail. He made admissions against interest when the facts led him to do so. But he remained cool, unflappable, and funny throughout. One got the sense that he wanted to sharpen iron against iron in real debates on these issue.

I remember driving back to New York that night, late — marveling at how much color he could give an interviewer he respected. And impressed. He was a really talented politician, with a very sharp mind. And although he has gotten a lot of guff for it, his fundamentally partisan instincts have made him a more effective advocate for his views. He took Trump’s side once Trump became an undeniable fact of the Republican Party. And in time, Trump began to take Senator Graham’s side. That candor and fairness is why he’s getting praise even from his ideological foes — men like Blake Masters and JD Vance, two “doves” that Graham supported fulsomely once they became nominees. R.I.P.