While House Democrats like the fried chicken guy play grandstanding “gotcha” games against President Trump and attorney general William Barr, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has demonstrated how respectful congressional oversight should be conducted.

Not only did Graham run a hearing May 1 in which all sides had fair and ample opportunity to get their questions, answers, and points across, he has followed up on the most obvious question arising from that hearing. He did so in an appropriate way, with a request and an invitation rather than with threats or other heavy-handed tactics.

The question with which much of the media has obsessed is whether Barr badly misled the public about the key takeaways from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian perfidy. The logical way to find the answer to that question is to go to the source. That’s exactly what Graham did.

On May 3, Graham wrote a letter to Mueller inviting the special counsel’s thoughts on the subject. After a polite introduction and a paragraph of background summary, Graham wrote:

In response to questions by Senator Blumenthal, the Attorney General testified in essence that you told him in a phone call that you did not challenge the accuracy of the Attorney General’s summary of your report’s principal conclusions, but rather you wanted more of the report, particularly the executive summaries concerning obstruction of justice, to be released promptly. In particular, Attorney General Barr testified that you believed media coverage of your investigation was unfair without the public release of those summaries. Please inform the Committee if you would like to provide testimony regarding any misrepresentation by the Attorney General of the substance of that phone call.

Simple, clear, and direct. No extravagant language. No outlandish demands. No apocalyptic threats. And not a single word showing prejudgment of the issue at hand.

If Mueller declines the invitation, and if the question continues to appear tremendously important, Graham can always return with a sterner request, and then a direct summons. None of that should be necessary, though. This shouldn’t be about scoring political points, or showing who’s boss, or trying to reach some predetermined conclusion. The Senate merely needs valid information, without histrionics.

That’s what Graham is seeking, and he is using a model approach.