TIM SCOTT: The Republican Party’s Joyful Warrior.

Over the course of a day I spent with the senator — on Capitol Hill and in Anacostia, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. — a picture of Scott as a vocal, visionary leader came into focus. He’s the man of the hour, though he might not know it.

If he does know, he certainly won’t admit it. This spring, he and his best friend in Washington, congressman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), co-authored a memoir on bipartisanship, Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Country. One section of Gowdy’s acknowledgements is addressed to Scott’s mother, Frances:

This book was supposed to be about your son Tim and your family. It was supposed to be about your hard work, your faith, and your determination that your children would turn out as well as they did. But you raised a son too modest to write a book about himself. Maybe one day we can convince him to do that.

When I mention this snippet to Scott, he chuckles ruefully and shakes his head, as if to say, “I didn’t want him to write that, either.” Truth is, Scott never intended to take up the self-glorifying business of politics. He wanted to be a minister.

Still, even after the doors of ministry were closed to him, Scott wasn’t sure that national politics would be an option. “I had never been to Washington before I got elected to Congress,” he tells me. “I am a reluctant warrior, though I am a joyful warrior. I am thankful that it worked out the way that it has.”

Scott keeps a remarkably low profile for a Senator, but I wonder how much longer that will last.