Could U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham be John McCain's pick for Vice President?

Let's look at the background of this 53 year old U.S. Senator.  His father owned a liquor store and his mom was a stay at home mother.  He was the first member of his family to attend college and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps.  At age 21, his mom died and his dad followed soon after, leaving Graham to raise his own sister whom he adopted.  This forced him to stay close to home where he graduated from the University of South Carolina - Columbia with a degree in psychology in 1977 and a law degree in 1981.

He is currently a member of the South Carolina Air National Guard after having served in the United States Air Force from 1982 to 1988, mostly as a military prosecutor.  From what I gather he is currently a Colonel in the reserves and has served as recently as 2007 as a JAG reserve officer in Iraq as a US Senator.

His political career started in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992.  In 1994 he was elected to the 3rd district of South Carolina, turning a historically Democrat leaning district to being a Republican leaning district.  He was one of the House impeachment managers for President Clinton's trial in the U.S. Senate, shooting down in the House Judiciary Committee some articles that he had opposed.  Upon the retirement of Strom Thurmond, he won his present office in the U.S. Senate. 

As a Senator he has join John McCain on some of his biggest legislative successes in McCain's career, giving McCain's conservative critics some heartburn and creating a similar maverick profile to McCain his best friend and mentor.   While Graham has a 90% conservative voting record, he has been quite willing to be independent from the party establishment and has deviated from the conservative line on some notably public issues.  For instance, Graham was an original member of the Gang of 14 with regard to short circuiting the Senate Republican "nuclear option" strategy with regards to judicial nominations, he helped get declassified and released certain memorandums of senior military lawyers on the legality of certain interrogation techniques used on detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, and he joined McCain in pushing for comprehensive immigration reform.

Graham also has authored legislation on both Medicare Reform and Social Security Reform that hues closer to the Republican platform, having studied both issues in depth.  He is quite articulate on the issues being arguably McCain's best spokesman on a host of issues. He is also much more mild mannered than McCain and has been seen as a calming influence on his friend's fiery temper.  He could be a good counter to the Joseph Biden VP nomination of Barack Obama in that he tends to be direct and to the point giving concise and articulate answers to the much more long winded and loquacious Biden, who sometimes is inflicted with hoof and mouth disease at the worst possible momment.

In the House he served on the Education and Workforce Committee, the International Relations Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Armed Services Committee.  In the U.S. Senate he has served and/or currently serves on the Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the Armed Services Committee, the Budget Committee, the Veteran's Affairs Committee, the Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry Committee, Committee on Aging, and on the Intelligence Committee.

Graham's 16 year voting record in South Carolina, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate basically neutralizes opposition from the religious right on the abortion, homosexual marriage, and judicial activism issues, the gun lobby on 2nd Amendment issues, and the economic conservatives on social security, medicare, budget and tax reform where they can begrudgingly support the ticket as a conservative ticket they can unite behind, without alienating independents and disaffected Democrats who are attracted to the maverick streak in John McCain.  His working class background should also help blunt the pick of Joseph Biden, plus the fact that he sacrificed a prestigious education to stay close to home to raise his sister, while he attended first college then law school is an endearing story for voters.   

The only potential stumbling block I can see is the fact that Graham has been a lifelong bachelor.  He writes the concerns over his single status off as him being alternately a loner, a nerd and/or a workaholic. Left wing attack dogs have created rumors that he is a homosexual, but they have not to dug up any proof of this claim.  By the way these are the same folks who have created similar rumors concerning Abe Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony without much proof.  A Graham online trip to E-harmony.com should be able to neutralize this rumor mongering.

Last one must note that John McCain recently publicly stated that his VP pick would carry out the same decisions he would make, if something were to happen to McCain. One has to wonder if Graham is the protégé and best friend in the Senate of McCain if there could really be anyone else.