two terms, he ran for the Senate in 1960, but lost.

Newly elected President John F. Kennedy asked McGovern to open an agency to send surplus food abroad. By late 1961, McGovern had Kennedy’s Food for Peace program operating in a dozen countries. It was one of McGovern’s proudest achievements.

In 1962, he became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from South Dakota in 26 years. His chief interest was world peace. He challenged “our Castro fixation,” decried America’s capacity for nuclear “overkill” and proposed a $4-billion reduction in the U.S. defense budget. He also supported Medicare, school lunches and the war on poverty.

Conservative South Dakotans re-elected him twice, despite his 81 percent rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Part of his success was his attention toconstituents. But another part was his authenticity, decency and sense of mission. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy noticed it. “Of all my colleagues,” he said, “the person who has the most feeling and does things in the most genuine way is George McGovern.”

McGovern was one of the first senators to warn against involvement in Vietnam, in 1963. Two years later, he opposed extending the fighting into North Vietnam and called the war a “moral debacle.” After Robert Kennedy was assassinated during his run for president, McGovern mounted his first campaign for the White House. He was defeated at the 1968 Democratic Convention, where young antiwar protesters were clubbed by police on the streets of Chicago.

Four years later, with antiwar sentiment at a pitch, he ran for president again. Almost