"Four years later, another antiwar Democrat managed to win the nomination. Senator George McGovern had flown thirty-five bombing missions against the Nazis in a B-24. He couldn’t be dismissed as a weakling afraid to draw blood. At the 1972 Democratic convention that summer, McGovern promised to withdraw the United States from Vietnam immediately: “[W]ithin ninety days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong.” The message failed. The McGovern campaign lost all but a single state in the general election to Richard Nixon. McGovern didn’t reassess. If anything he hardened his position. Before leaving the race, McGovern made the case for what might now be described as an America First foreign policy: “This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation.” It would be forty-four years before another presidential candidate made that point as forcefully, and he was a Republican."