My colleague Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover story will serve as a Rosetta Stone for scholars and analysts trying to decode President Obama’s foreign policy. I won’t try to summarize it; it deserves to be read in full. But at one point, Jeff writes of Obama: “He is, by nature, Spockian.”

We’ve been publishing this magazine for 158 years, and as best I can tell, it’s the first time that adjective has appeared in our pages—and the first time we’ve compared a sitting president to a pointy-eared Vulcan.

Elsewhere in the piece, Obama quotes from The Godfather: Part III and Dark Knight—but labeling the film-buff-in-chief Spockian reminded me of a scene from J.J. Abrams 2009 remake of Star Trek. A young James T. Kirk is asked to simulate command in a lose-lose situation known as Kobayashi Maru; he hacks the simulator to allow himself to do the impossible, and win. Spock, who programmed the simulation, accuses him of cheating. Kirk counters that the test itself is a cheat, because it can’t be won. “You argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario,” Spock says. “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios,” Kirk fires back.