While a recent poll conducted by Gravis Marketing showed Senator John McCain struggling in a Republican Primary fight in his own state, his good friend Senator Lindsey Graham is doing far worse in the Republican Presidential race. So it was no surprise that McCain avoided Arizona voters for a few days while he campaigned for Graham in New Hampshire in early August.
Although Gravis has earned the reputation as “the worst poll in America,” McCain is losing support and Graham is hoping to benefit from what star power his friend, a former POW and the country’s loudest hawk, has left.
Don’t expect Graham to reciprocate.
Graham was one of the first to attack Donald Trump after Trump made a flippant and insensitive comment about McCain’s service in July. According to the New York Times, Trumps’ comment allowed Graham to highlight his own military service. Now, questions have arisen about Graham’s own service.
According to an article in the popular military website, John Q. Public, there are questions as to whether Graham “fairly earned promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel and whether he actually performed the duties listed in his service record..”
Tony Carr, a Distinguished Flying Cross winner and the founder on the John Q. site is a retired USAF pilot. He writes, “a recent investigative report by the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and a follow-on piece on the website Popular Military have stoked doubts about whether Graham’s service record has been exaggerated, and whether it reflects improprieties in the handling of his career. Whether Graham fairly earned promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel and whether he actually performed the duties listed in his service record are the key questions raised by the Post report, and they’re not unfair questions given the facts.”
Whitlock reports, “During his first decade in Congress, the Air Force promoted Graham twice even though documents in his military personnel file reveal that he did little or no work. Later, the Pentagon gave the military lawyer a job assignment in the Air Force Reserve that he highlighted in his biography for several years but never performed.”
According to Carr, “not only did Graham never teach a single class at the JAG school, he never even attended the basic instructor course required for all faculty members. This means he was never qualified for the job…. Yet, he held down a duty title at the school for nine years, even if that duty title (“Senior Instructor”) never existed.”
Whitlock quotes one active-duty Air Force lawyer, who spoke about Graham on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, who said, “Clearly, the rules didn’t apply to him.”
Tony Carr saw Graham’s story as “a possible window into questionable conduct within the military chain of command.”
And while his story certainly does that, it is also a widow into the world of John McCain as well.
McCain is ruthless and exploits his own service at every opportunity. The people of Arizona don’t re-elect him time after time because he has served their interests, but because he has served.