If Mitch McConnell were to die this afternoon, this much is certain: The New York Times would have its trademark deep-dive obituary published within minutes.

But Lindsey Graham, the irrepressible four-term senator from South Carolina, the 71-year-old chairman of the Senate Budget Committee? Not even the Times saw this coming, as evidenced by the fact that they were still tweaking his obit at 3:20 this morning.

I didn’t think I’d miss Lindsey Graham much, but I already do. Admittedly, his McCainian habit of racing for the nearest microphone and his interventionist tendencies often got on my nerves, but he loved his country like nothing else — except maybe his native South Carolina — and he loved our military, which he served for 33 years. The guy was a singular senator, yes, but above all, he was a Patriot. And perhaps more important than all of this: His people loved him.

Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, which seems fitting, given his unflagging advocacy for that country since Vladimir Putin’s “minor incursion” in 2022.

In retrospect, it seems like a fitting final mission for Graham. On Friday in Kyiv, there he was, doing what he loved, standing in front of a bunch of reporters and telling the American people what he thought. “I’ve never been more optimistic than I am today,” Graham said, “that we have the formula to end this war, help Ukraine be more lethal, let those supporting Russia know there’s going to be a price to be paid if you keep doing it, and to try to find an off-ramp, not to humiliate Putin, but to end this war so that Ukraine will thrive and survive.”

Then he came home. And he died. As the Times tells it:

His office announced the death in a statement early Sunday. Mr. Graham had returned earlier on Saturday from a trip to Ukraine. According to recordings of dispatcher calls obtained by The New York Times, emergency workers responded late Saturday to a call about a person experiencing chest pains at the senator’s Capitol Hill address.

A preliminary report from the Washington, D.C., medical examiner’s office indicated that the cause was an aortic dissection, a tear in the main artery that carries blood from the heart, caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, a gradual weakening and hardening of the arteries.

Graham’s dad died of a heart attack at age 69, so perhaps someone should’ve been paying more attention to his health. As Fox News chief congressional correspondent Chad Pergram noted yesterday, he’d noticed that Graham had appeared a bit more “haggard” and “puffy” of late.

Said Pergram, “My phone rang at 2:35 this morning, and I frankly thought that call was about Mitch McConnell.”

Graham came to Congress as part of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 wave, when the Republicans wrested control of Congress from the Democrats for the first time since 1952, the year Ike was elected. Talk about being out in the wilderness.

Graham was also a politician in the finest sense of the word — not the derogatory sense that’s been earned by so many of today’s Swamp dwellers. He was also an esteemed and unpretentious dinner companion to many Republicans on Capitol Hill, and his drinks of choice were a Coke Zero and a Riesling. Donald Trump, who’d spoken with Graham shortly before he died, put it this way: “There was nobody like him. He loved being a politician.”

As Trump said yesterday, “I just can’t believe it. He was like a member of the family to me. It’s very tough, actually.”

I think the most remarkable tributes to Graham centered on his ability to build bridges with just about anyone. Think about it: He was a golf buddy, dear friend, and trusted adviser to President Trump. And yet Graham’s political hero and mentor was perhaps Trump’s foremost political foe — John McCain. I don’t think anyone else in Washington could’ve pulled off such a balancing act. And yet Graham did it with seeming effortlessness. I listened to a lot of tributes to the man yesterday, but I didn’t hear anyone mention this. Yet it’s so telling.

As his longtime friend and fellow South Carolinian Trey Gowdy put it last night, “Lindsey Graham invoked passion in others, including many of my friends. And I would tell them all the same thing: Play golf with us, spend some time around him. You may not vote for him, but you will like him in the end. And to the person, they did.”

Graham’s, er, bachelorhood was one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington, but it didn’t matter to anyone — not to John McCain, and not to Donald Trump, and not to all of the many people who held him in such high regard. On second thought, it it clearly mattered to Jen Psaki. And it probably mattered to lying Joy Reid. But that tells us a lot more about those two than Lindsey Graham, doesn’t it?

Graham was one of the Senate’s strongest voices, especially on matters of defense, foreign policy, and Israel. But his finest hour as a lawmaker no doubt came during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, when on September 27, 2018, he single-handedly stiffened the spines of the entire weak-kneed Republican caucus at a moment when Kavanaugh was in deep jeopardy due to a series of sleazy, scummy, and scurrilous sexual assault charges from the Democrats and their Leftmedia bootlickers.

“If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us,” Graham contemptuously sneered. “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020. You’ve said that. Not me.”

He then looked at Kavanaugh and said, “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

Then he shifted back to the Democrats: “When you see [Sonia] Sotomayor and [Elena] Kagan, tell them that Lindsey said ‘hello.’ Because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you’ve done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.”

And then this: “Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham.”

Lindsey Graham’s parents died 15 months apart when he was just a youngster, and perhaps it was because he endured such pain in his life at a young age that he was so good at alleviating discomfort in others. As his fellow South Carolina Senator, Tim Scott, put it, “He would do the uncomfortable to make others comfortable. You never felt invisible in Lindsey Graham’s presence.”

Graham was a transactional presence in the Senate, as evidenced by the tributes coming in from lefties such as Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, and Dick Blumenthal. As for replacing him, Pergram notes that the GOP can’t pull anyone from the House because the Republican majority there is already razor thin. Indeed, truth-telling Congressman Joe “You Lie!” Wilson has already said that he’s going to stay in the House to protect that narrow margin.

Pergram says that perhaps South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster will appoint a “caretaker” senator until the party can find a candidate through a primary election. There’s currently such a senator serving in Oklahoma in former Senator Markwayne Mullin’s seat, as Mullin has since been appointed by Trump as DHS secretary.

As Tim Scott put it, “The hole that Lindsey Graham left in the Senate cannot be filled. … We’ve got a lot of work to do to find someone who can come close to what Lindsey Graham meant for this country — not to this country but for this country — on the global stage.”

As Scott added, “People in South Carolina understand who he was. They kept reelecting him because they knew that he was a statesman — not a politician, but someone dedicated to making sure every single day that South Carolina families were better off because he was in public service.”

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn thinks that it’d be a fitting tribute to her colleague for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that Graham thoroughly believed in. But there’s a fat chance of that happening, as it would require a handful of Democrats to briefly behave in a thoughtful and nonpartisan manner, and in a manner befitting the interests of the overwhelming majority of the American people rather than the narrow political interests of their particular political party.

Graham was a funny and gregarious man, but he was also an everyman, the first man in his family to go to college. His passing is a shock to the system, unlike the passing of someone older, someone more clearly on the downward spiral of life, like, say, Mitch McConnell.

Of all the politicians in Washington, Graham was one of the ones that I really enjoyed, not because I always agreed with him — not even close — but because he was never afraid to say what was on his mind. As Bibi Netanyahu said, he spoke with moral clarity. And he was a real Patriot. You always knew that about Lindsey Graham.

Indiana Senator Jim Banks sat on the Armed Services Committee with Graham and also served in uniform. As he put it, “I would say that Lindsey Graham is the most effective senator in the Trump era, for a lot of reasons. And what most people will never see is how effective he was in our daily lunch meetings with Republican senators, to rally support from those senators who were less interested in going along with President Trump, to convince them that we had to do what we had to do to support our country, whether it was the Trump tax cuts or supporting our troops and our military.”

As Gowdy said while fighting back tears last night, “He was a man born in the back of a liquor store who rose to incredible political heights. He helped raise his sister, Darline, after their parents died, he served our country in uniform, he embarked on a political career that his parents could scarcely have dreamed of. The president of the United States considered him a friend and was a frequent golf companion.”

Gowdy closed it this way: “Life is fragile. If only I had known last Friday was the last day that I’ll ever see him. But we don’t. We don’t know. I think he knew that I loved him, even on the days when he made me pull my hair out. I still loved him. I’ll see you again, Chairman. In the meantime, enjoy your parents. Rest. I’ll see you on the first tee. Good night … from a broken-hearted South Carolina.”