Ted Cruz, beyond the caricature

His revealing alliance with Democrats on a bill to combat military sexual assault

In a valiant struggle, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s most notable ally might be her most improbable.

The New York Democrat is taking on the goliath U.S. military over a central premise: that a commander has sole authority over his underlings.

When it comes to a plague of sexual assaults, she proposes yanking a commander’s authority to decide whether an allegation is prosecuted. Her bill to institute an independent system is expected to be voted on this week.

The intrepid challenge to the military’s hallowed “chain of command” lures mostly Democrats. But there’s also Republican freshman firebrand Ted Cruz of Texas.

Washington is a navel-gazing, claustrophobic town that can turn on caricature. It’s easier to label folks saints or sinners than capture life’s true complexity.

“It’s portraying opponents as too dumb to know the truth, or smart enough and wanting people to suffer. In fact, most people are neither stupid nor evil,” Cruz told me Friday.

Nobody is more subject to cartoonish depiction than Cruz, 43, who joined the cozy Senate Club just 13 months ago after a huge upset win in his very first campaign.

He’s thus derided as a fire-breathing, self-promoting Tea Party “wacko bird” (John McCain’s term, for which he’s since apologized) who is interested in scorching earth, not compromising.

In fact, he’s more wonk than wacko bird. A failing might be revealing a bit too much head, not quite enough heart — which might make him a bit of a conservative counterpart to President Obama.

Also like Obama, there’s brainpower and fearlessness. He’s shrewd and has a penchant for empirical results.

When it came to Gillibrand’s argument, Cruz said that two realities were ultimately convincing.

First, after decades of well-intentioned efforts, the military was failing and female victims were ever more reluctant to come forward out of fear.

Second, U.S. allies such as Great Britain and Israel had instituted similar reforms and not experienced declines in order and discipline, as the Pentagon warns.

Cruz did struggle. If you’re going to change the culture as it relates to commanders, he said, you run risks by removing them from the process and not “incentivizing them” to change that culture.

“That gave me the most pause,” he said. But he sided with Gillibrand.

And this was all before his national profile reached a zenith last fall, with his nearly 21-hour, sort-of filibuster of Obamacare.

That endeared him to many opponents of the law and chagrined others. It also came amid his very public campaign to push Republicans to not fund government even if they did fund Obamacare.

He came off as a catalyst of the subsequent government shutdown. Some GOP colleagues thought it was dumb, in the process revealing their own “How dare he?!” attitude toward the freshman.

And at that point, Cruz already had detractors on Capitol Hill, including Republicans who derided him as a self-promoting gadfly with a penchant to attack his own party colleagues.

Some would roll their eyes when he came off to them like some eighth-grade civics teacher explaining to other senators —a generally self-confident and thinskinned lot — how the Senate is meant to work.

Perhaps it’s the champ college debater in him, or the former Texas solicitor general who was an able litigant when arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court.

And, as an excellent profile in the cur- rent Texas Monthly underscores, the polarizing Cruz, 43, is a more nuanced and nimble figure than the D.C. caricature suggests.

His improbable Senate victory in 2012 included tactics that one Texas observer tagged “political jujitsu” as he upended the heavy favorite in the GOP primary.

There was luck, but also cunning in branding himself a “fighter” in ways that belied a pretty establishment (Princeton, Harvard law) pedigree.

As for Gillibrand, she doesn’t buy into the wacko bird caricature.

“I think he’s looked at the issue [sexual assault] thoughtfully and objectively as a former lawyer and Supreme Court advocate and was persuaded by the substance.”

“He believes the decision-makers are biased and that this kind of reform would make a difference.”

“I think he is thoughtful,” she said, careful to add: “I disagree with him on many issues.”

“He’s had probably the most impactful first year as a senator since . . . who?” asked Bill Kristol, the Upper West Side native and conservative editor-observer.

“Some of what he’s done is problematic, but it’s still pretty darn impressive."