Take Lindsey Graham. The worst thing a person can be.

I wrote this a few months ago about Lindsey Graham. It seems like an appropriate time to publish.

Take Lindsey Graham. The worst thing a person can be.

I once went to see John McCain speak in Charleston, and Lindsey was there, barnacled onto him, always trying to slide into the camera frame.

After the speech, my friends and I went to a restaurant, and who was already there but Lindsey Graham, still in his blue suit jacket and khaki pants. My friend Bull went to the bathroom and came back claiming he used the urinal right next to him. What a moment in American history, using the urinal next to a sitting US senator. Though our brush with American history was not yet done. Lindsey walked by our table as he left and I said to him, "Hi, Senator Graham," with a big dumb grin because I knew the senator from South Carolina's name. He looked at me with those tight little lips and said, "Make sure you pay the tax on that bill so I can still get a paycheck."

My God, how we laughed.

But today he's not just a performative politician back home. He's tied his entire political identity to Donald Trump. A man who can't organize a basic military parade is somehow supposed to pull off the hardest thing a president can do: win a war of aggression against people on their own land. Far more competent and far more ruthless men have failed at that.

And now here we are, weeks into a war with Iran, and everything feels more chaotic than the day before. We hear a girls' school was hit by a missile, then learn it was a misidentification, and for a brief, selfish moment every American wonders if they are less safe than they were yesterday. Maybe nothing happens today. Maybe not tomorrow. But ten years from now? When the anger has had time to harden? When someone who lost everything decides more violence makes it right?

That's how this works.

That same weekend we went to McCain's South Carolina victory party and speech. There again our group was part of US history.

If you watch the footage, you can see me holding up a sign I had made with a website I was promoting, near the middle of the crowd during John McCain's victory speech. Apparently I wasn't supposed to have a sign there, because it had the possibility of blocking John McCain's view of the teleprompter.

When I lifted the sign, McCain paused mid-speech because I stuck my cheap little sign right between him and the teleprompter. Security grabbed it instantly, with four different campaign workers coming from different edges of the crowd. I grabbed it back, because an hour earlier I had gotten Byron York to sign it, and you don't let a security guard walk off with your Byron York-signed McCain sign.

I still have that sign, by the way. And one day I'll auction it off for no less than $10,000.

But I will say, things do get worse. After everything settled down, I tried to take a picture of the teleprompter I had blocked. The flash went off and McCain paused again, just slightly, because the flash had bounced off the teleprompter. A guy in a blue bowtie leaned over and whispered, "You see what you did? You blinded him."

So yes, technically, I interrupted John McCain's speech twice.

How many people can say that?

I'm also left remembering the speech itself. The crowd chanting "Mac is back," then "USA, USA," and McCain ending with one of the most painfully earnest lines I've ever heard: "I will not let you down, so help me God."

Then the camera pans, and there's Lindsey Graham again, getting as close as possible to McCain and into the camera shot.

Today Lindsey Graham is on TV telling young men in South Carolina to go fight Iranians, while leaders in Iran tell their young men to fight Americans.

So the real question isn't whether Lindsey Graham will be remembered as a fool. It's whether he'll stand out among the larger cast of them. History is full of moments where people handed power to loud demagogues completely unfit to carry it.

The question is this: will we be teaching it to our students as a cautionary tale? Or will someone else be teaching it about us?