LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Go to the campaign website of struggling Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, and you’ll be greeted with a photo of Pryor’s Republican opponent, Republican Rep. Tom Cotton, gazing down at you, with the headline ‘Superior Tom: After climbing the ladder of opportunity, Tom Cotton looks down on Arkansans.”

The phrase “Superior Tom” is derived, apparently, from a recent profile of Cotton by the Atlantic’s Molly Ball. In “The Making of a Conservative Superstar,” Ball unearthed Cotton’s senior thesis at Harvard. Ball wrote that the thesis, which was an essay on the Federalist Papers, “provides a window into a political candidate who is otherwise something of a cipher” and could help observers pierce Cotton’s “air of impenetrability” and his “blankness.”