Lindsey Graham: Someone needs to solve the hard problems

CORALVILLE - Call Lindsey Graham the adult in the room.

He's not the loudest, slickest or flashiest in the expansive field of Republicans considering their chances to become president.

'But if you're looking for a president to solve problems, I think I'll do well,” he says about his chances in the race for the GOP nomination that starts in Iowa.

If he runs - Graham says he'll decide in May based on the support he's getting, including whether he can raise $15 million - his campaign will be about what he has accomplished, not what he's talked about accomplishing.

'I'm going to embrace the fact I've tried to solve hard problems because somebody needs to do this,” Graham said before speaking to about 40 people at Mondo's Draft House in Coralville recently.

For the 59-year-old third-term senator from South Carolina, showing up and getting things done matters. Graham takes what he calls the Ronald Reagan approach to governing 'where you say, ‘All right, if I get 80 percent of what I want, that's a good day.'”

In that regard, you might call Graham the anti-Cruz.

'I want to repeal Obamacare and replace it, but I never believed that shutting down the government would get us there,” he says without mentioning Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by name. 'I never believed Obama would sign a bill repealing his signature issue based on a threat by us to shut the government down.”

That's not to say he doesn't share of some libertarian views on the proper role of the federal government. But it's not his ideology.

'Libertarians want smaller government. Count me in. Libertarians want oversight of government programs and making sure that your freedoms are not easily compromised. Count me in. Ted Cruz wants to fight Obamacare. Count me in,” Graham says.

'Our view of limited government and free enterprise is pretty commonly shared,” he continues. 'What we wind up doing is having tactical differences.”

One difference is that for Graham, regardless of the issue, 'I want to fix it rather than yell about it.”

In a nutshell, Graham's stump speech is about radical Islam as a national security challenge that can't be wished away, the retirement of the baby boomers presenting two unique challenges - the need for legal immigration to supplement the workforce and a bipartisan plan to save Social Security and Medicare - meeting energy needs without borrowing money from the Chinese to buy oil from people who hate the United States and a strong military and foreign policy that 'creates world order rather than world chaos.”

'It's not so much speaking truth to power as it's mostly explaining the really big issues in ways people can understand and offering solutions that require some sacrifice,” Graham says.

Graham prides himself on working across the aisle to seek agreement. He's unwilling to accept the attitude he sees in both parties 'that if you're not willing to hate the guy I hate then you're not really conservative or you're not really liberal.”

He also rejects the idea that he's part of the 'mushy middle” that many conservatives see as the reason Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections.

'There's nothing mushy about solving hard problems,” he says. 'There's nothing about mushy about wanting to save Social Security and working with Democrats to do so. There's nothing mushy about trying to get Democratic buy-in to rebuild the military. There's nothing mushy about trying to fix a broken immigration system and realizing that Democrats have to be part of the mix.

'I think that's leadership.”

Graham is realistic about his chances in Iowa, but says the first-in-the-nation caucuses are just the beginning.

'Iowa gives a person like me a chance,” Graham says. 'So the goal is to do well in Iowa and just keep getting better the closer I get to South Carolina,” which follows New Hampshire on the primary calendar.

'If I didn't think I could win South Carolina, I wouldn't be here talking to Iowans,” Graham says, 'and we'll see how far that takes me.”