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Once out of the Air Force, he returned to South Carolina and entered politics, where it seemed as if everything went his way. After two years in the legislature, he caught the Republican wave of 1994 and rode it to the House of Representatives. He supported McCain in the state's brutal 2000 G.O.P. primary and might have been punished by the new President's team, except for the fact that a Senate seat opened up with the retirement of 100-year-old Strom Thurmond two years later, and Graham had the best shot at winning it. Bush ended up coming to the state to campaign for him, in what became the most expensive Senate race in state history.
Those who don't like Graham say he is an opportunist and a grandstander. There are stories of him driving two hours for the chance to be on television for three minutes. But this month's "Best and Worst of Congress" rankings in Washingtonian magazine--the kind of popularity contest you might remember from your high school yearbook--have him pegged by a poll of 1,700 Capitol Hill insiders as one of the top choices in four categories: "Rising Star," "Straightest Shooter," "Bridge-Building Centrist" and "Funniest."
One place where Graham is not giving anyone much to laugh about these days is the White House. In an impassioned Rose Garden news conference, Bush warned that the proposal by the rebellious Republican Senators, if carried out, would give him no choice but to cancel the CIA's interrogation program of high-value terrorism suspects because it would deprive "our professionals" of the clear permission they need to continue using aggressive interrogation techniques. And the President suggested that the consequences of losing those techniques could be dire: "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland."
Graham insists that there are still ways to work out a compromise, although both sides appear to be digging in. "I share the President's goal of pursuing a CIA program that would protect us and operate within the rule of law," he told TIME. "And I will work with him to achieve that." That's a call to duty for both Senator and Colonel Graham.