WASHINGTON

Lindsey Graham once said his road to Congress ran through a coronary clinic because it involves so many South Carolina barbecues. Today, as a senator, he thinks he sees a path to the Republican presidential nomination. He has many strengths, but two substantial problems.

Two clarifying issues reveal who is conservative and underscore two of Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities. They are the U.S. attack on Libya and her attack on freedom of political speech.

Secretary of State Clinton helped initiate months of chasing Moammar Gadhafi with fighter-bombers. This exercise in regime change succeeded in decapitating Libya’s government. It was, however, progressive imperialism, supposedly humanitarian muscularity untainted by any clear U.S. national interest. Hence its appeal to a liberal administration, which neglected to ask: “But then what?”

Now we know what. Libya is a failed state incubating radical Islamists.

In 2016, when Clinton is asked about her complicity in this calamity, she might say, “What difference at this point does it make?” Graham will be unable to press the point effectively. He too supported violent regime change in Libya.

Graham did urge taking responsibility for the aftermath. Democracy’s prerequisites were, however, as lacking there as they were in Iraq, where we should have learned the perils of “nation-building” and how discordant that is with conservative precepts.

Clinton promises to expand the power of the political class to regulate campaign speech about itself, “even if that takes a constitutional amendment.” Graham knows it would be necessary to amend the First Amendment in order to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which he, like she, dislikes. In it, the court reasoned that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they join together to magnify their political speech.

Clinton’s aspiration to make the Bill of Rights less restraining on government and less protective of individuals would be accomplished by empowering Congress to legislate what it considers reasonable restrictions on contributions to finance the dissemination of political speech. The Washington Post reports that in New Hampshire recently Graham “called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United .”

Challenged about this, he says he might consider instead undoing the damage he and other “reformers” have done. Removing limits on contributions to parties would divert the flow of money from super PACs back to the parties, where it once went. Parties should then be able to make unlimited expenditures for, and coordinate with, their candidates. This would make parties more robust and accountable, and campaign political financing more transparent.

The infancy of super PACs is, Graham says, over. “They are full-blown teenagers” who in this cycle could, he thinks, produce a brokered nominating convention. Suppose that super PACs enable, say, five 2016 candidates to survive until July, losing often but winning here and there. Suppose the five reach the convention with a combined total of delegates larger than the 1,236 needed for a nominating majority. What fun.

To reach a rendezvous with Clinton in the autumn of 2016, Graham must play by the rules we have. Win or lose, he is too intelligent to join her in proposing slapdash constitutional vandalism.

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post and Newsweek.

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