What's scarier than Iran hawk President Lindsey Graham? How about
Secretary of Defense Lindsey Graham? Why he's exploring a run for president is not entirely clear. The tea party hates him because he's always mouthing off about bipartisanship, and sometimes even means it. The Republican base doesn't really care about foreign policy, and that's pretty much all he's got to run on. With true extremists in the race, he's unlikely to be competitive for big money like the Kochs'. So what's he doing?
"He's running for secretary of defense," says Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist in Florida with experience in South Carolina politics. "He'll never say it, but if you know him well enough, it's the only logical reason. He'll make sure foreign policy is a central focus" of his campaign.
"If the Republicans win the White House, Lindsey Graham will have his choice of being secretary of defense or secretary of state, if he does it right," Katon Dawson, Graham's longtime friend and the former chair of the South Carolina Republican party, told National Review.
It's damned near impossible to overestimate the ego of a senator. They pretty much all believe, deep down, that they could be president, doubly so for Republicans. It probably has something to do with their permanent seats on the Sunday talk show circuit. It's possible, just possible, that Graham truly believes, but that he's really running to try to control the nation's defense policy is a much likelier bet.