I met the late Sen. Lindsey Graham about 20 years ago, when I was coming up in conservative politics.

I had been part of the neoconservative wing that believed in the “benevolent hegemon” version of America, and the idea that “history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will,” as Francis Fukuyama once described it.

Like Fukuyama, many of us later came to question both the prudence and the righteousness of that theory as the Iraq War unraveled. But at the time, my hawkishness endeared me to people like Lindsey. Famously a hawk himself, he took to calling me “my little libertarian,” not because I was one, but as a playful dig at my occasional limitations on war — namely, the Constitution.

As recently as last summer, he charged into a room in the basement of the Capitol where I was and proclaimed, “There she is — my little libertarian.”

I enjoyed working with Graham in those early........

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