Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions campaigns for his old U.S. Senate seat from Alabama with the style of a grad student defending his dissertation to a faculty committee. Unlike most politicians today, he seems earnestly to be trying to prove that his theses all cohere, connecting intellectual dots rather than appealing to the voters’ inner ids.

In an invite-only meeting on Wednesday in his home city of Mobile with about 10 people — in these days of the coronavirus, small meetings are usually the only sort allowable — Sessions made his case for Trumpian policies in a most un-Trumpian fashion. He speaks deliberately, pausing to come up with just the right word or argument, almost as if running his thoughts through an internal filter to ensure they are relevant, defensible, honorable, and true.