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Summers he worked on the railroad alongside blacks and Chicanos, acquiring populist convictions. Hart spent four years at Bethany Nazarene College in Oklahoma, a conservative Methodist school, where he was not allowed to drink (he likes margaritas nowadays) or see movies (he is a compulsive filmgoer). After graduation, he went east with his new wife Lee, now 48, whom he met at Bethany. At Yale, Hart was a divinity-school student, then earned a law degree. His missionary instincts took a political turn in 1960, when he volunteered for John F.
Kennedy's presidential campaign.
A taste of Washington came next, first at the Justice Department and later at Interior. The Harts moved with their two children (Andrea, now 19, and John, 17) to Colorado, and for a few years he practiced and taught law. But the pull of presidential politics was stronger. First came a heady few months in the Robert Kennedy crusade. Then, in 1970, he took over the campaign of an obscure South Dakota Senator with powerful feelings against the Viet Nam War—"a one-issue candidate," Hart said, "with no charisma"—and miraculously engineered McGovern's nomination.
Hart in 1984 is just the opposite: he has charisma, a sheaf of issues. But even back then, he was drifting to the right of his colleagues. Hart wrote in 1973 that the Democrats' "liberal wing ... was running dry. The traditional sources of invigorating, inspiring and creative ideas were dissipated. American liberalism was near bankruptcy." When Hart first ran for the Senate, ten years ago, he virtually disowned McGovern, and relations between the two men remain strained.
Hart's sharp-edged intelligence has led him naturally to a campaign that flaunts policy ideas. Yet he has not surrounded himself with issues advisers.
Hart is self-contained. Loners seldom accomplish much in the clubby Senate, and Hart's legislative achievements are few.
But he is respected by Republicans and Democrats for his conscientiousness and depth. "If I was in the horse-trader business, I don't think I'd hire Gary Hart," says Senator James Exon, a Nebraska Democrat. "He's not a wheeler-dealer.
But I like him." So do most colleagues, it seems, despite Hart's shy standoffishness.
"I'm not gregarious," Hart admits.
"I don't go around slapping people on the back."
His maverick astringency serves to distinguish Hart from Mondale. But governing can seldom be an antiseptic enterprise. According to Lawrence Smith, his former legislative aide, Hart despises "the jukin' and jivin' phoniness of politics." Of course, he has lately realized the value of campaign theatrics. In New Hampshire, he put on red suspenders for an ax-throwing contest, slurped chocolate ice cream with three boys in a shopping mall, shook hands with a store mannequin for a laugh.
Some of his campaign mannerisms resemble President Kennedy's, a likeness Hart is happy to encourage.