The New Republic

John McCain is feeling nostalgic. It is a frigid morning in early
December, and his campaign bus--once again christened the Straight
Talk Express- -is barreling through the New Hampshire countryside
en route to yet another town hall meeting. As he sits in his cabin
in the back of the bus, holding court for the small press
contingent traveling with him, he begins thinking back to this time
eight years ago."You've got to remember," McCain says, raising his voice to be heard
over the din of the engine, "it was by no means clear [in 2000]
that we were going to win New Hampshire a month out." Of course, in
that month, McCain caught fire. Likening himself to "Luke Skywalker
trying to get out of the Death Star," he waged an insurgent
campaign against the GOP establishment and its anointed candidate,
George W. Bush--scoring a landslide upset in New Hampshire, only to
have the empire strike back in South Carolina and effectively bring
his presidential bid to an end.

Eight years later, McCain naturally doesn't want to talk about the
2000 campaign's depressing denouement, choosing instead to focus on
its thrilling beginning--and, more to the point, how those heady
days in 2000 bear an increasing resemblance to what he says he's
seeing now, just a little more than a month before the January 8
primary that is shaping up to be his last stand. This, in and of
itself, is something that would have once been inconceivable. A
year ago, it would have been inconceivable because the
then-front-running McCain was supposed to have already sewn up the
nomination by this point. And, six months ago, when McCain's
campaign organization imploded and much of his senior staff either
quit or was fired, it seemed inconceivable that he would still be
on the trail come December, let alone competitive in New Hampshire.

Yet, with the GOP race still in a remarkable state of flux, McCain,
partly by dint of hanging around, now stands a chance of winning
the state. He has secured the endorsement of its largest newspaper,
the Union-Leader, and climbed to second place in statewide polls.
And, while he still trails Mitt Romney by double digits in most of
those polls, the front-runner is now in danger of losing
Iowa--which would weaken him going into New Hampshire. Although his
political resurrection is still unlikely, McCain is enjoying
himself. "We've started to sense some of what was going on back in
'99," he says. "The audience, the turnout at the town hall
meetings. ... You can just sense the uptick in excitement." For
McCain--whose campaign at this point may be less about winning the
presidency than about reclaiming some of the dignity he earned the
last time he ran--that alone is a victory of sorts.

While McCain undoubtedly would have preferred for the 2008 campaign
to have gone differently, the front-runner mantle was never a good
fit. Although his reputation as a maverick can certainly be
overdone, when it comes to campaigning, he truly is one--with the
near-constant access he affords both the press and voters. "The way
he does things entails risks," says longtime aide Mark Salter.
"Front-runners are usually about protecting the ball. He's not."

Today, McCain's campaign is a barebones affair. It stays in budget
hotels and doesn't bother with elaborate advance work at events.
Most of the campaign's remaining senior staffers, including Salter,
are foregoing salaries. Even the 2008 version of the Straight Talk
Express is reputed to be shabbier than the one from eight years
ago. But all this has merely freed the candidate to run the sort of
improvisational and highly personal campaign at which he excels.

More than any other politician, McCain seems to draw voters who are
seeking some sort of emotional comfort. And, by turning his events
into freewheeling sessions, he inevitably hears from them--whether
it's the mother of a solider slain in Iraq who wants McCain to wear
a memorial bracelet or the wife of a veteran who wants McCain's
counsel about how to keep her family together now that her husband
is having trouble finding work. At a climate change forum in
Portsmouth, one man who had been severely disabled in a motorcycle
accident some 20 years ago shocks the audience, not to mention the
candidate, by essentially asking whether McCain thinks he should
commit suicide. "All I can tell you," McCain responds, "is that I
know that loving family members, loving neighbors and friends want
to do everything we can to help you live as long and as beautiful a
life as possible. And we pray for you. And we cherish you. God
bless you."

But, while McCain offers plenty of psychological comfort on the
stump, he still provokes political discomfort--sometimes going out
of his way to do so. At a Rotary Club meeting in Portsmouth, a
businesswoman asks McCain what he would do to reverse the rise in
gasoline and heating oil prices before going on to make a
tangential observation about how commodities traders, and not opec,
control those prices. But McCain can't let the aside go. Rather than
reassuring the woman that he'd tackle high energy prices, he
replies, "First of all, with respect, I do not accept your thesis.
I think opec still controls the [prices]. " When the woman starts
to protest, he cuts her off: "You can send me your facts, and I'll
send you my facts."

It was this blunt style that made McCain an overnight star here in
2000. But now McCain's refusal to pander is hurting him badly on
two issues: immigration and the Bush administration. At a town hall
in Raymond, an agitated man complains to McCain--who has taken a
softer line on immigration than his GOP rivals--about "these
illegal Mexicans" supposedly getting Social Security money and free
health care. When McCain tries to appeal to his compassionate
side-- noting that illegal immigrants "are God's children" and that
"there are people who die in the desert"--the man shouts, "They
take the risk!" "Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it,"
McCain replies in a resigned tone as the man storms out of the
meeting. "And I understand why you wouldn't support me."

But, if McCain isn't conservative enough on immigration for
Republicans, he's not independent enough from the Bush
administration for independents. In 2000, New Hampshire
independents-- who make up about 45 percent of the state's
electorate and are permitted to vote in either the Democratic or
Republican primary--overwhelmingly went for McCain. But, this time
around, polls show them favoring Barack Obama. And a big reason
seems to be McCain's refusal to go after Bush the way he did in
2000. At the Portsmouth Rotary Club meeting, an independent voter
named Larry Gray asks McCain about how he'd choose a vice
president. The question is really just a thinly veiled invitation to
attack Dick Cheney, but McCain doesn't bite, filibustering with a
joke about how the veep's two jobs are "to break a tie vote in the
Senate ... and to inquire daily about the health of the president."
Afterward, Gray is disappointed. "I think favorably of him," he
tells me. "But I'm disappointed he didn't say something negative
about Cheney."

McCain and his aides insist that he can win not only New Hampshire
but also the nomination. A victory here, they predict, would lead
to an influx of Internet cash that would instantly solve McCain's
money woes. "In 2000, we raised one million online overnight--in
2000," Salter says. And McCain claims that this cycle's compressed
primary calendar would help him in South Carolina, which comes just
11 days after New Hampshire. "A lot of people allege that, if you'd
have had this amount of time between the New Hampshire and South
Carolina primaries [in 2000], I would be president of the United
States today," McCain says. "Because it wasn't until the last few
days that the machine in South Carolina kicked in and then-Governor
Bush overtook us."

It's impossible to know whether McCain and his aides really believe
these arguments. But it's easy to recognize how grateful they are
for the opportunity to make them. And that, it seems, is the real
meaning of what McCain's supporters now call his "New Hampshire
surge": that it has given him one last chance to do something he so
obviously loves. Sitting by a fire late one night at Bedford's
Wayfarer Inn and gossiping with his former campaign strategist Mike
Murphy; taking constant phone calls from his friend Lindsey Graham,
who's urging him to go on the air with ads in South Carolina;
repeating the same corny jokes he told on the stump in 2000;
saluting the legions of veterans who flock to his events--McCain,
like his boyhood hero Ted Williams hitting a home run in his final
career at-bat during an otherwise meaningless late-season game, is
getting one more chance to recapture some of his past glories. And
if he were to actually win New Hampshire? It's unlikely it would
propel him to the nomination; but it would undoubtedly cushion the
blow of his seemingly inevitable defeat. And, if politics owes John
McCain anything, it may just be that.

share this article on facebook or twitter print this article