After Hillary Clinton has the nomination nearly sewn up, the New York Times decides to run a Sunday magazine piece titled “How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk,” by Mark Landler revealing conclusively that she has a greater “appetite for military engagement” than anyone else in the race, on either side. Here’s the nut graf:

Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone — grounded in cold realism about human nature and what one aide calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.” It set her apart from her rival-turned-boss, Barack Obama, who avoided military entanglements and tried to reconcile Americans to a world in which the United States was no longer the undisputed hegemon. And it will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election. For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.

The article details Clinton’s long commitment to the use of force, including incidents never revealed before; explains why Donald Trump is likely to be far less eager to go to war than she would be; and says that Clinton had to hide her hawkishness during the primaries so far:

To thwart the progressive insurgency of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton carefully calibrated her message during the Democratic primaries

The piece is an ode to Clinton’s “pugnacity” and her “muscular brand of American foreign policy,” with a celebratory chorus line of Robert Gates, Jake Sullivan and various functionaries. And lest you had any doubt about the newspaper’s point of view, there’s this foolish bonbon at the end:

It’s an open question how well Clinton’s hawkish instincts match the country’s mood. Americans are weary of war and remain suspicious of foreign entanglements. And yet, after the retrenchment of the Obama years, there is polling evidence that they are equally dissatisfied with a portrait of their country as a spent force

It’s not an open question actually. As Stephanie Schriock of Emily’s List told J Street last week, the mood of the people is isolationist, they don’t want to be engaged in foreign wars.

So why are we learning this now? Donald Johnson nails the journalistic and moral dereliction at the heart of this publication: