NEW YORK: Buckley v. Moynihan

One candidate looks like a smalltown professor, vintage 1956: the haircut is modified crew, the clothes drab and slightly ill-fitting, the rhetoric sparing and precise. The other candidate actually is a professor, but with his practiced flamboyance, a wardrobe of elegant mismatches and a manner that oscillates from pixie to pedagogue and back within a 60-second monologue, he comes across more like a ripe character actor in search of his next role. The contrast is appropriate because rarely do voters get a chance to choose between candidates for the Senate—or any other office—who differ so clearly in persona and...