In his Thursday front-page New York Times profile of "gruff" Sen. Ted Cruz on the trail in Iowa political reporter Matt Flegenheimer took pains to portray the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate as an unlikeable, socially awkward “bomb-thrower” ideologue (“appraised as grating and pompous as a matter of bipartisan consensus”) in “Cruz the Gruff Taking a Turn At Being Nice.” The online headline was no less hostile: "After Making Enemies, Ted Cruz Tries to Make Friends.” Never mind that his poll numbers show he's gaining a lot of supporters in Iowa.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders suffer heavy deficits in the charisma department, but don’t get personally attacked for it on the front page the Times. Flegenheimer’s opinionated profile piece, which characterized Cruz’s demeanor as growling and his rhetoric as “apocalyptic,” was more suitable for a guest essay in the magazine than an ostensibly balanced front-page news story from one of the paper’s stable of political reporters.

Senator Ted Cruz had been at it for several minutes, offering handshakes and uneasy smiles, when he encountered an apparent holdout in the crowd. Mr. Cruz squatted. He squinted. He had heard something about a toy collection. And so, about three feet above the floor of an American Legion hall here, the senator began his questioning. “You have lots of toys?” he asked 3-year-old Isaac Josselyn. Nothing. “What’s your favorite toy?” More silence. “Do you have a dinosaur?’” “Do you have a fire truck?” “You have a toy monkey?”

Isaac stared blankly. “A toy monkey!” Mr. Cruz shouted, revving for a punch line no one understood. “You know what that means? You get to be the monkey in the house!”

The Times trotted out its favorite hostile description of aggressive conservative reformers. Evidently there’s a new “bomb-thrower” on the Hill to take over from Newt Gingrich.