I wonder how Lindsey Graham will answer the Eternal’s inquiry about his dealings with Donald Trump?
Will he plead capitulating his principles permitted him to influence Trump on foreign and military affairs, that those priorities were more important than his prescient 2015 assessment that Trump was a “demagogue” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”?
Graham was never known as a devout advocate for the underprivileged. Black or white or Latino. His was not a voice of compassion for men, women and children suffering from cutbacks in programs that directly benefitted them but were targeted by Trump for alleged abuse of entitlement systems and fraud.
No, the South Carolina senator unabashedly played honestly with his close compact to the raw heat of Trumpian power. He epitomized his party’s deal with the devil. As many Republicans have done, Graham swore allegiance to a man who demanded extreme loyalty but could not be trusted to return the favor. At least Graham admitted his pact so he could be, as Lin-Manuel Miranda put it in “Hamilton,” “in the room where it happened.” Or, in Graham’s case, on the golf course.
Back in my elementary school days, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” was required reading. A 1936 short story turned into an opera, a play and movie, it is a tale of greed gone wrong. A struggling New Hampshire farmer sells his soul to the devil for seven prosperous years.
Shortly before he has to pay the ultimate price he seeks to renege on the deal. He enlists Daniel Webster, a well known lawyer, orator and former U. S. secretary of state to defend his right to absolve the contract before a jury of world famous historical brigands.
Webster wins. Saves him by, as Wikipedia puts it, “appeal(ing) to the fundamental decency, rights, and shared spirit of the American people.”
Graham had no similar advocate. His seven years of fealty came due without reprieve July 11. It was a spontaneous, unexpected, death.
Sadly, I wonder if the author of the short story, Stephen Vincent Benét, would ascribe to today’s American people those same admiral qualities that won over the jury that saved the farmer.
We would all be wise to heed the lessons of “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_and_Daniel_Webster)
