WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham, the lawmaker who once wondered aloud whether President Bill Clinton's impeachment scandal was Watergate or "Peyton Place," has a way of getting to the heart of the matter.
"What do you say to those people who are calling for your resignation?" Graham asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as he faced the Senate Armed Services Committee amid the widening scandal of abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
That was just one of the pointed questions that Graham, R-S.C., posed as he questioned Pentagon officials and chided colleagues who sought to play down the reports by saying the abuse paled next to the horrors inflicted by Saddam Hussein's government.
"I don't want to compare my military and my country to the Republican Guard and Saddam Hussein," said Graham, 48, who was recently promoted to colonel in the Air Force Reserve. "If that is our standard, we have already cheapened ourselves."
Graham, who burst on the Washington psyche in 1998 as a folksy impeachment prosecutor of Clinton in the House, is setting himself apart in the prison scandal, his stature enhanced by 20 years as a military defense lawyer, prosecutor and judge.
"He is gutsy," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is on the Armed Services panel with Graham. "He is independent in his questioning. He will challenge the administration if he thinks they are wrong."
That independent streak is perhaps Graham's defining characteristic. In less than two years in the Senate, he has developed a reputation for going his own way, even working with the Democratic leader, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, to pass legislation on military benefits. He again joined with Democrats to help them block limits on medical malpractice awards, a favored legislative initiative of the majority leader, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee.
"He has always been his own person," said his sister, Darline Graham, who became the responsibility of her brother after their parents died when Graham was in college and she was 13. "He never went with what was popular. I can remember when he was real young, and blue jeans and long hair were in style. Not Lindsey. Never wore jeans."
But he did wear a uniform, an action that led to his first moment in the national spotlight. After graduating from the University of South Carolina Law School, Graham became the equivalent of an Air Force public defender and helped expose a flawed drug-testing program that was the subject of a report on "60 Minutes." Graham was also a military prosecutor and judge, which he said gave him a singular perspective on the prison crisis.
"That experience taught me that bad things happen and things get out of control," said Graham, who added that his years in the service had also convinced him that the military justice system worked. He said he expected that it would do so again in the new crisis and rejected a sentiment that the inquiry was somehow harmful to American troops.
"We are not overreacting," he said in an interview on Wednesday shortly after viewing the graphic prison images shown privately to lawmakers. "The men and women who serve in the military, who made this their calling, want this to be done more than any other group, because it is a stain on their honor."
Some colleagues roll their eyes at Graham's effort to seize the moment, attributing it to the usual drive to make a reputation. But Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Graham was a valuable asset.
"He has an uncanny ability of taking facts and translating them into simple declarative English sentences that people understand," Warner said.
Graham was elected to the South Carolina Legislature in 1992 and won an open House seat in 1994, running as a strong conservative. His first brush with attention was in 1997, when he was part of a failed push to oust Speaker Newt Gingrich.
But it was the House impeachment and Senate trial where he established himself as a presence, using the verbal skills that he learned in the courtroom — and at his parents' neighborhood bar — to press the failed case against Clinton. Even then, he was not shy about breaking with his party by opposing some impeachment charges.
In 2002, Graham won the Senate seat left open by Strom Thurmond's retirement. Graham defeated a well-known opponent, Alex Sanders, former president of the College of Charleston, as Republicans reclaimed the Senate. Back home, a top Democrat said he admired the way Graham had handled himself so far in the prison inquiry.
"I don't know that any of us thought he would be as mature in the position as he is right now," said Richard Harpootlian, a former state Democratic chairman. Harpootlian said Graham was asserting the independence expected in a state that simultaneously sent a Republican, Thurmond, and a Democrat, Ernest F. Hollings, to the Senate for half a century.
Looking back at the impeachment, Graham acknowledges that significant debate over whether that proceeding was justified remains today. He said he would leave that judgment to history. But he also said the need to get to the bottom of the prison crisis was potentially much more important for the future world standing of the United States.
"This is about a war, this is totally different," he said. "We have an opportunity to demonstrate to the Arab world and others that the rule of law matters. We are the good guys. But being the good guys comes with a burden."