McGovern was an idealist, confident in the power of goodwill to change the world. In graduate school at Northwestern, during a late-night bull session, another student asked him, “George, what makes you tick?” The South Dakotan thought of his father, a rural fundamentalist minister, and uttered a favorite quotation from the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Whoever shall save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” He kept that verse on his Senate office wall. Others, too, though they were too small for visitors to notice: “What doth the Lord require of
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