Leaving aside the merits of his decision to join an already-overflowing field of candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency of the United States in 2016, the problem the US faces which Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina feels he’s best equipped to solve is this: “I’m running because I think the world is falling apart.”

As Charlie Pierce says, this will be “a presidential campaign based almost entirely on existential terror.”

That’s probably right. With Senator Graham, though, it may be as simple as his sense that his friends Joe Lieberman and John McCain ran and now it’s his turn in the barrel. If that’s the case, can Senator Ayotte of New Hampshire be far behind?