George Stanley McGovern (born 1922), a U.S. senator since 1962 and an early opponent of the war in Vietnam, was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1972.

George McGovern was born on July 19, 1922, in Avon, South Dakota, a son of the Middle Border--the great prairie region steeped in agrarian, small-town, churchgoing ways and in populist liberalism and hope. His father, Joseph McGovern, a Wesleyan Methodist preacher, was stern about faith and morals and regarded drinking, smoking, and dancing as temptations to be fled. Joseph McGovern's last pastorate was at Mitchell, South Dakota, where George attended school.

George's formative years were shaped by the Puritan ethos of work, self-restraint, abstinence, sacrifice, and inner discipline. He was a shy, bookish boy, but he discovered himself in high school debating and was so good at it that he got a scholarship to attend Dakota Wesleyan University in 1940.

At college McGovern wooed a...