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The passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham got me wondering about political alliances he made with two other senators. They were John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, and the 2008 presidential nominee and Joe Lieberman, an Independent senator from Connecticut and former Democratic 2000 vice presidential nominee.
McCain was a Naval hero, and a two-time presidential contender. He was born into a military family where both his father and grandfather were four-star Navy admirals. McCain became a Navy attack pilot. In 1967, during the Vietnam War his plane was shot down over Hanoi. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war.
After retiring from the Navy, McCain moved to Arizona where he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, followed by the U.S. Senate in 1986. He served six terms in the Senate, establishing himself as a hawk on defense issues and an advocate for campaign finance reform. McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, losing a fierce primary to George W. Bush. He secured the Republican nomination in 2008 but lost the general election to Barack Obama. McCain passed away from brain cancer on Aug. 25, 2018, at the age of 81.
Lieberman made history as the first Jewish American to be nominated on a major-party presidential ticket. Born in Stamford, Conn., Lieberman graduated from Yale University and Yale Law School. He served as Connecticut’s Attorney General before winning election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1988. In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore chose Lieberman as his running mate.
Lieberman was progressive on domestic policy but a hawk on foreign policy. His support for the 2003 Iraq War alienated progressive Democrats, leading to his defeat in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary. However, he ran as an independent and won re-election.
In 2008, he broke partisan boundaries by officially endorsing Republican McCain for president and speaking at the Republican National Convention. Lieberman died at the age of 82 on March 27, 2024, due to complications from a fall.
Graham from South Carolina spent decades shaping judicial confirmations and national security strategies. Raised in rooms behind a bar/liquor store/pool hall in Central South Carolina, Graham faced early adversity when both of his parents died within a year of each other while he was in college, leading him to adopt his sister. Following law school, he joined the U.S. Air Force, serving as a military prosecutor and defense attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and later retired from the Air Force Reserves as a colonel.
Graham was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995 and to the U.S. Senate in 2002 where McCain, Graham, and Lieberman quickly formed a close-knit, cross-party trio known as “The Three Amigos.” Linked by a shared dedication to robust American global leadership, national security, and frequent overseas travel to global conflict zones, they greatly influenced U.S. foreign policy for over two decades.
Driven by McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war and backed by Lieberman and Graham, the trio championed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. It prohibited the cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, directly targeting the controversial “enhanced interrogation” techniques used during the War on Terror.
As senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the trio formed a unified voting bloc to pass successive National Defense Authorization Acts. They successfully fought for robust defense spending including the expansion of troop benefits, and the modernization of military hardware through the late 2000s and early 2010s.
By 2006, with support for the Iraq War plummeting, McCain, Lieberman, and Graham fiercely fought the consensus of both parties that favored a swift U.S. drawdown and aggressively lobbied for an increase in American troop deployment.
They advocated for a counterinsurgency strategy which called for sending roughly 30,000 additional U.S. troops to stabilize Baghdad and Al Anbar Governorate. They used their leverage on the Senate Armed Services and Homeland Security committees to defend the highly unpopular policy against intense congressional pushback. Bush ultimately implemented the surge in January 2007. The intervention succeeded in drastically lowering civilian and military casualties, stabilizing the region, and creating a window for the eventual structured withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Beyond 2009, they were the main congressional counterweight to the Obama administration. They successfully pressured the administration for a more aggressive troop surge in Afghanistan in 2009 and aggressively lobbied for U.S. intervention during the 2011 Libyan civil war.
What was it that brought these very different men together? According to Meghan McCain, the trio functioned well because of distinct, complementary personalities. Her father was the soul of the group, Lieberman was the heart, and Graham was the fire and humor. They traveled the world together visiting combat zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. This shared danger and responsibility forged a bond sturdier than party ideology.
While they represented completely different backgrounds and parties, they were fiercely united by a singular, shared principle: a belief in robust American international leadership. They gave us a clear example of the meaning of the phrase "Politics stops at the water’s edge,” that partisan disputes should be set aside so the United States could present a united front to the rest of the world. Sadly, that is seldom the case today.
Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com