For decades, Washington operated on an assumption so fundamental that it rarely needed stating: Political opposition is a crucial part of democracy, not a rejection of it.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and the late Senator John McCain disagreed often, sometimes bitterly. Yet they understood that the machinery of government could not simply halt because the people running it despised one another.
Senator Lindsey Graham, whose sudden death at 71 stunned Capitol Hill this week, belonged to that same generation. Graham will be remembered as a Republican who fought Democrats hard and, when it mattered, negotiated with them anyway.
“He was good with the other side, if I had Democrat problems, he could solve them,” Trump said Monday on Fox News.
Graham’s passing leaves Washington with a question that extends beyond tributes, party lines, or the vacancy in South Carolina: What happens to bipartisanship when the people who practiced it are gone?
Graham was never easy to summarize.
He rarely met a war he did not like. His foreign-policy views could be aggressive, unsettling, and, to his critics, morally indefensible. He could be partisan, theatrical, and infuriating.
And yet, on Capitol Hill, he was also liked.
That fact matters.
It spoke to an older Washington tradition in which profound policy disagreements did not have to become permanent personal ruptures. Not long ago, that was not considered unusual.
Graham belonged to that world.
His closeness to John McCain put him at the center of several bipartisan efforts. His later evolution from a fierce Trump critic to one of the president’s most visible Senate allies made him both a bridge and, in the eyes of some, a warning between political eras.
Now, as the lawmakers most associated with cross-aisle dealmaking retire, decline, or pass away, Washington confronts a question it can no longer dodge: Is bipartisanship merely weakened, or are we watching it disappear?
At a Capitol Hill news conference Monday, I asked House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries what remained of that tradition—and what he planned to do to preserve it.
Jeffries opened with condolences. “Let me again offer my thoughts, prayers and condolences to the family of Lindsey Graham; to his friends and loved ones; to his Senate colleagues; and, of course, to his constituents,” he said.
He then highlighted the quality Graham embodied that now feels scarce: the willingness to work across the aisle despite deep disagreements.
“We disagreed on a whole host of issues, but he was someone who was committed to a lifetime of service,” Jeffries said.
“On occasion—particularly when he was closely aligned with John McCain—he leaned into the importance of trying to get things done in a bipartisan way for the American people.”
Jeffries made clear that House Democrats stood ready to continue that practice.
“House Democrats have made clear from the very beginning of this Congress that we will work with anyone, at any time and in any place, to solve problems on behalf of the American people,” he said.
But he placed the blame for the current impasse squarely on President Donald Trump. “The big problem we have confronted is that Donald Trump has not been interested in making life better for everyday Americans,” Jeffries said.
“Right now, he is focused on trying to rig the midterm elections.”
Jeffries pointed to the recently enacted 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act intended to expand the housing supply and restrict large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes.
“Trump threw a temper tantrum,” Jeffries said, “because he was more interested in his election agenda than in lowering the cost of living.”
“As House Democrats, we do care,” he added. “Exhibit A is the Housing Affordability Bill.”
So where does Graham’s passing leave Washington?
There is no politics without conflict. Governing, however, requires something more. The older generation understood that, even when it failed to live up to the principle.
The real test of bipartisanship in America today is not whether politicians can praise a deceased colleague. Washington has always been generous with the dead.
The test is whether the living can still negotiate with one another before disagreement hardens into hatred. Before the habit of finding a common ground in the best interest of all Americans itself is lost.
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