Smile! You’re in candid audio.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made some self-deprecating jokes and colorful remarks about the state of the government during a recent private gathering, per a recording provided to CNN by South Carolina Democrats.
“I’ve tried to help you with your tax status. I’m sorry the government’s so f***ed up,” he remarked to the Hibernian Society of Charleston, S.C. The group is an Irish-Catholic charity organization that welcomes “frequently bawdy speeches” from big-time politicians, CNN observed, and is all-male.
“If I get to be president, white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great in my presidency,” Graham joked. The two-term hawk perhaps best known to the public as a frequent ally of Sen. John McCain in foreign policy debates has toyed with the idea of a 2016 run, recently telling The Weekly Standard that he will begin exploring the possibility after Tuesday’s elections.
Graham told CNN in an interview about the Hibernian event that the club encourages speakers “to be earthy, to make fun of yourself, to make fun of them. Then you say something serious and sit down. And if you talk over 20 minutes, they throw something at you.”
The D.C. press has already determined that Graham’s 2016 bid “may have just gotten a bit more complicated” because of the remarks. Should a political observer, partisan or not, want to explain why, he’d likely say that it was problematic for Graham to make a comment about “white men” in his administration. Should someone jump to Graham’s defense and say, “But what about Biden,” the Graham critic would pass off the vice-president’s frequent racial gaffes as inherent and harmless silliness, as he never made a remark about the employment status of people based on their skin color. This is how overthinking in a political world with too much time on its hands works. Sounds like Lindsey Graham was in the equivalent of a roast atmosphere. Such a place is not one for the bland. Perhaps it’s not one for the politician, either.
