The politics of inheritance and Trump loyalty by John Kato

Lindsey Graham dies and South Carolina does not merely search for a senator; it produces, with remarkable efficiency, another Graham. Darline Graham has now won the Republican nomination, defeating Ralph Norman with roughly 52 percent of the vote, and heads toward November as the overwhelming favorite in a state where Republican victory has become less an election than a seasonal expectation.

The remarkable thing is not that Graham won. It is what, exactly, the Republican primary appears to have been asking voters to endorse.

Her strongest credential was not a record in the Senate, because she had none. It was not expertise in foreign policy or national security, the sort of knowledge that might reasonably be considered useful when one is applying for a six-year seat in the United States Senate. It was not a long legislative record or a distinctive theory of government. Instead, she possessed two politically potent forms of inheritance: the Graham name and Donald Trump's blessing.

That may be enough in today's Republican Party. Graham's supporters can point to her work as a disability advocate and former commissioner of South Carolina's Commission for the Blind. But they do not magically become a foreign-policy education because the job description says "United States Senate." During the campaign, Graham acknowledged that national security was not her area of expertise. It was also rather alarming. Senators do not get to hand the national-security portfolio to someone else while they concentrate on the things they know better.

The Senate is not a ceremonial extension of a state legislature. It votes on treaties, wars, intelligence appointments, military authorizations, sanctions, international alliances and the federal budget. A senator can learn, of course. But there is a difference between admitting you have homework to do and presenting the absence of knowledge as though it were a charming personality trait.

Trump, meanwhile, understood the assignment perfectly. He did not need to explain what Graham would contribute to the Senate. He needed only to establish that she was his Graham. His endorsement transformed the contest into another referendum on personal loyalty: Are you with Trump? Then you are with Darline.

This is the increasingly peculiar economy of Republican politics. Policy has not disappeared, exactly. It has been compressed into allegiance. The candidate's identity becomes the policy. Loyalty becomes competence by association. And the endorsement of the leader becomes a kind of transferable résumé.

The tragedy is that South Carolina deserves more imagination than this. Voters ought to be offered a choice between competing visions of America's role in the world, its economy, its military, its institutions and its future. Instead, they have been offered a political sequel.

Perhaps Darline Graham will prove everyone wrong. Perhaps she will become an unexpectedly formidable senator, immerse herself in the briefs, master foreign affairs and develop an independent voice. That would be welcome.

But democracy should not require voters to purchase a mystery box. A Senate seat is not a family photograph. It is not a Trump loyalty card. And it certainly should not be inherited like the silverware. South Carolina may elect Darline Graham in November. The more important question is whether, after the celebration, anyone can explain why. That should concern everyone. Security procedures are supposed to outlast them. That is precisely why they matter.