THE LATE SEN. HENRY “SCOOP” JACKSON used to say, “I’m a liberal but not a damn fool.” On domestic policy, he was indeed a liberal: a lifelong Democrat who enthusiastically backed the New Deal-Fair Deal economic agenda of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. But in foreign affairs, Jackson was, as one journalist put it in 1972, “the hawkiest hawk” around. This made him the quintessential Cold War liberal.

Monday morning, at the opening session of the GOP convention, Republican delegates met a contemporary Scoop Jackson Democrat: former New York City mayor Ed Koch.