Of all the places in Washington, Beto O’Rourke chose to run to the Lincoln Memorial. Jogging through an early winter storm in the capital the week following his loss in the race for U.S. Senate, O’Rourke found himself, gimpy knee and all, running up the steps of the majestic monument to the 16th president. There, he wrote in a Medium post, he paused to read the words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Suddenly, his knee stopped hurting—as if Honest Abe’s words had a special healing power (but “maybe it just needed to fully warm up,” he wrote).