Slugging It Out

“What’s the capacity of this place?”

“I have no idear,” the cop responded.

The young man dashed off, still looking anxious.

He had reason to be nervous. It was 11:25 A.M. the Saturday before the New Hampshire primary, and the Peterborough Town Hall was full. McCain was not scheduled to arrive for another 50 minutes. The rapidly growing crowd of McCain supporters, many of them wearing duck boots and North Face outdoor gear, spilled onto the street and stood perched on snow drifts. They mixed with supporters of Dennis Kucinich (who had an event nearby) and Ron Paul (whose supporters were everywhere). Down the street, a corpulent Kucinich supporter, wearing a Flavor Flav-sized button featuring a sassy Dennis Kucinich headshot, chased would-be voters carrying a wooden stake with three Kucinich yard signs duct-taped together. (“Dude, how many drugs did you take this morning?” asked one man he accosted.)

The McCain crowd struck up a chant of “Mac is back” and waited for a glimpse of the 2008 version of the Straight Talk Express. It arrived–with another bus for press behind it–to wild cheering.

Once inside, McCain told the crowd that he was happy to be there, and he looked like he meant it. He was clearly energized by the size of the crowd. To his left, hanging onto the railing of a short stairway leading up to the stage, Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer crouched next to former congressman Charlie Bass and congressman Chris Shays, craning his neck to get a better view of the candidate. Other big name journalists from big name media outlets had come to see McCain. There was Joe Klein from Time magazine and Jeff Greenfield from CBS and Dana Bash from CNN. In the back of the spacious hall is a set of risers with a large bank of cameras.

The speech was short, and McCain took more than a dozen questions from the audience. When he was finished, McCain shook hands on the way to the back of the room, where he was quickly engulfed by reporters, cameras, and microphones. McCain spoke just above a whisper and was very hard to hear unless you happened to occupy a spot directly in front of him. This complicated matters for journalists, now standing eight deep, trying to time their shouted questions to the end of his last answer. Reporters yelled over one another and the candidate. And all of this before his five-point win in New Hampshire last Tuesday.

Things were different back in early September. Few national media outlets were interested in McCain after an abysmal summer that left him with a depleted staff, very little money, and dwindling support in the polls. When I came to see him in New Hampshire a week before the “No Surrender Tour” that would help reinvigorate his campaign, there was no Straight Talk Express, just a plain white Ford Econoline van with two McCain bumper stickers. Instead of shouting questions to him from the back of a pack of national journalists, or even sitting with him in a group interview aboard the Straight Talk Express, as reporters do now, a campaign staffer casually asked me if I wanted to join McCain and his family for Thai food in Concord.

Thanks to one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent political history, John McCain is now back to exactly where he started this race and exactly where many people thought he would be from the beginning. He is the frontrunner.

McCain is leading in some polls taken in each of the next two primary states, Michigan and South Carolina. His chief rival to this point, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, is weakened after two losses. Having pulled many of his resources from South Carolina and Florida, Romney is betting his candidacy on a win in Michigan, the state his father once governed. McCain’s friend and erstwhile supporter, former senator Fred Thompson, is coming off an excellent debate performance in South Carolina and is counting on a strong finish in the state to invigorate his campaign. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, has seen his post-Iowa momentum slowed by New Hampshire and by the emerging reality that his motivational-speaker bromides cannot forever hide his ignorance of foreign policy and national security. (A proponent of “vertical leadership,” Huckabee seems to believe that a good attitude and pleasant platitudes will help him reach higher altitudes.) And Rudy Giuliani, who snatched the frontrunner mantle from McCain earlier this year, has handed it back by skipping Iowa, fading expensively in New Hampshire, and waiting for Florida.

The McCain campaign leadership is confident, not cocky, about the prospect that their man will accept the Republican nomination in Minneapolis this summer. But they understand on an intensely personal level how quickly things can change.

In early 2007, McCain’s campaign seemed to be humming along nicely. He and Rudy Giuliani were the best-known Republicans in the race, and the two men almost always appeared at the top of national polls. McCain was raising money at a respectable, if not spectacular, pace. And he was enlisting many of the Republican party’s biggest stars in his cause, with top quality consultants and advisers and an early wave of endorsements.

But McCain had two major problems: the Iraq war and conservatives. The war was not going well. On January 10, the president announced a change in Iraq strategy that included a “surge” of more troops, something McCain had been calling for consistently in one way or another since before the war. In November 2006, Bush had cashiered Donald Rumsfeld, something else McCain had been pushing for more than two years. Even though these adjustments allowed McCain to claim that the White House was finally listening to him, they came at a price. His constant criticism of the conduct of the war–he calls it “mismanagement”–reinforced with many conservatives his reputation as a maverick, even as disloyal. Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth criticized McCain for his opposition to the Bush tax cuts. Pro-life groups were angry about his aggressive intervention in a campaign finance case involving Wisconsin Right to Life, and most other conservatives shared their frustrations with McCain over his willingness to regulate political speech with campaign finance laws. Movement conservatives have long mistrusted McCain, and his early campaign did little to change their perceptions.

By April there were signs of growing trouble. In the first quarter of 2007, McCain raised about $12.5 million, less than both Romney and Giuliani. But he spent lots of money to raise money, and he racked up significant expenditures on his growing team of campaign consultants and staff. Of that $12.5 million, slightly above $5 million was left, and McCain had accumulated almost $2 million in debt.

As spring gave way to summer, things got worse. Inside McCain’s campaign, there were deepening divisions on nearly everything: campaign strategy, fundraising, and, importantly, policy. Several of McCain’s top advisers believed his candidacy was doomed as long as he was closely identified with Iraq. This influential group included Bush 2000 alumni Russ Schriefer and Terry Nelson, as well as pollster Bill McInturff and top McCain strategist John Weaver.

Congressional Democrats were intent on making Iraq the central debate of the summer, and congressional Republicans were telling the White House–in private and sometimes in public–that they could not stop their opponents from passing legislation calling for a withdrawal of American troops. Several McCain advisers thought such a legislative defeat was inevitable and recommended that McCain reverse himself and lead Republicans away from Iraq.

(These McCain advisers were hardly alone. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani were getting precisely the same advice. And the Washington press corps was virtually unanimous that the Iraq war meant political disaster for the GOP.)

As the campaign cast about for a policy focus, Schriefer presented plans to make McCain the candidate of energy policy. Just as McCain had owned the “reform” issue in 2000, the thinking went, he could make his stand in the early primary states on energy.

The proposal did not sit well with some of his colleagues, who believed McCain was finished politically if he tried to distance himself from Iraq. This second group–which included gregarious longtime aide Mark Salter, Senator Lindsey Graham, and aides Dan McKivergan, Brett O’Donnell, and Randy Scheunemann–urged McCain to invest even more heavily in Iraq–to “own the surge,” as one memo from O’Donnell put it. Campaign manager Rick Davis embraced this view.

As that debate continued out of the public eye, another fight made the papers. McCain’s second quarter finance numbers were abysmal, and when they were released, senior campaign officials traded blame anonymously in the media. McCain was furious. According to Graham, he ordered them to stop and then made a series of phone calls firing several of his closest advisers and asking many others to work without pay or at least for a steep discount. McCain took responsibility for the problems publicly and mandated that the campaign spend no more than $1.5 million per month, at least for the time being.

But with top strategists leaving campaign headquarters in bunches and advisers in key states going with them, the campaign was in meltdown. McCain’s problems, exacerbated by his stubbornness on Iraq and relatively forgiving views on illegal immigration, meant that he dominated the news about the presidential race for several weeks.

“The speed and severity of the unraveling of John McCain’s bid for the presidency is nearly impossible to capture,” wrote John Heilemann in New York magazine. Members of Congress who had once enthusiastically endorsed McCain were now refusing to return his calls. A phone call with outside policy advisers, called to reassure them that the campaign would continue, had only one participant.

“It was like, John who?” says Graham. “We were the living dead.”

The prospects for improvement were bleak. “It would be pleasingly counterintuitive to declare that McCain, at this, his lowest moment, is now poised for a miraculous recovery,” Heilemann continued. “A more sober assessment of his predicament suggests the Straight Talk Express may be up on blocks before 2008 arrives–and that, in turn, raises a blunt question for a man who prizes bluntness above all: Why not walk away right now and avoid further humiliation?”

McCain got a respite from all of this in, of all places, Iraq. In early July, he traveled there with Graham, who sought to buck up his friend. Graham posed a question to McCain. “Name one person you can’t beat,” he said, before listing the candidates one after another. The two men agreed that the field was eminently beatable, so long as no one “caught fire,” as Graham puts it today.

In Baghdad, McCain and Graham spent time with General David Petraeus and received an on-the-ground assessment of the surge, which had begun in full force just one month earlier. Petraeus, always cautious, was careful not to oversell his gains. Still, in methodical fashion he laid out for the senators why he was confident that his changes had created the conditions for a dramatic turnaround in Iraq. McCain had come to Iraq with confidence in Petraeus, and he left with even more.

Back in the United States, he sharpened his attacks on critics of the Iraq policy–including Hillary Clinton and MoveOn.org–and resolved to block any and all Democratic efforts to withdraw troops. The result? Democrats (especially the candidates for the nomination) began derisively referring to the change in strategy as “the McCain surge.”

Virtually everyone regarded McCain’s position as disastrous. “Republicans’ intensity of support has waned as the war has become an albatross around their party’s neck,” wrote Charlie Cook, the highly regarded political analyst. “They cannot afford to nominate a presidential candidate whose name has become synonymous with the surge.”

McCain was dead.

“For all intents and purposes, McCain’s campaign is over,” Cook continued. “The physicians have pulled up the sheet; the executors of the estate are taking over. Paying bills and winding down–not strategizing, organizing, and getting a message out–will be the order of the day.”

Undeterred, and with very little to lose, McCain decided to gamble. McCain, who is legendarily superstitious, told reporters traveling with him last week that he has been known to contribute to the economy of Las Vegas, Nevada. Like many blackjack players, he considers the number 11 very lucky. This was like doubling-down on 12.

Campaign adviser Steve Schmidt suggested that they call the effort the “No Surrender Tour,” and McCain started using a new line in his stump speech. “I’d rather lose an election than lose a war.” Not everyone liked it. “I asked him: Why don’t you stop saying that?” recalls Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. “People are beginning to think you are going to lose.”

Black was right. “We all thought that was going to happen,” says one reporter for a prominent newsweekly who spent time with McCain during those days.

But McCain refused. “He said, ‘No. I mean it,'” says Black, with a laugh. “And it turns out he was exactly right.”

The situation on the ground in Iraq improved dramatically, and by early fall some of the most outspoken opponents of the surge had to concede that it was working. McCain’s poll numbers slowly began to move. Back in July, several polls had him in fourth place nationally, behind Giuliani, Romney, and Thompson. By late December, McCain was leading one national poll and was competitive in all the others.

Things would change dramatically by the time people actually started casting their votes in January. At the Fox News debate in New Hampshire on January 6, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, both candidates who refused to endorse the surge when it was first proposed, vied to see who could appear more pro-surge. And at the ABC News debate the previous night, Romney paused from his near-constant attacks on McCain to give him credit for his early support of the surge.

After New Hampshire, McCain’s campaign chartered a 757 to fly to the upcoming primary states. Following stops in Grand Rapids and Pontiac, Michigan, where voters will cast ballots on January 15, McCain pushed on to South Carolina, where the Republican primary will be held four days later.

As the airplane departed Pontiac for Charleston, McCain wandered back to a clearing between the emergency exits on each side of the plane. There were no seats in the emergency exit row, so there was a lot of space to stand around and chat. McCain began talking with several reporters, and the group soon expanded.

So much has been written about McCain’s relationship with the media that it is hard to say anything fresh. But McCain’s way of engaging with journalists is so different from that of other candidates that it is worth dwelling on it for a moment.

On a typical campaign trip, time with the candidate–“the principal,” in campaignspeak–is severely restricted. Anytime a typical candidate agrees to speak to the press, it’s a big deal, and journalists are often competitive about access and proximity. Because candidates speak so infrequently their words take on added importance, and journalists spend much of their time trying to trip candidates up or force them to say something that will make news. For the candidate, a press conference is often a matter of avoiding mistakes, more than a chance to communicate a message to the public.

None of this is true with McCain. He engages journalists at every opportunity. He speaks informally and does not labor over his words. He is quick with a joke and likes to make fun of the reporters covering him. He sometimes says that he does not want to talk about a subject, but this is rare, and chances are good that if you ask him again an hour or two later, he will answer your question. More often, he talks about things that other politicians prefer to avoid.

He is so accessible that reporters often decide to sit out a chat with the candidate on the plane or take a pass on an opportunity to ride with him on the “Straight Talk Express.” At one point in New Hampshire, a McCain press aide notified a reporter that it was his turn for time with the senator. He shrugged, waved his hand, and said, “I’ve got to do some work. I’ll catch up with him later.”

On the plane, when I joined the circle around McCain, who looked relaxed in a navy suit, a blue shirt, and a light blue tie, he stopped the conversation to bring me up to speed.

“Hey, Steve. We’re talking about spontaneity.”

McCain saw that I was perplexed. “How my line about change in the last debate was spontaneous,” he said, rolling his eyes in self-mockery. (At that debate, McCain had poked fun at Romney’s flip-flops by saying: “We disagree on many issues, but I agree that you are the candidate of change.”)

“It was so spontaneous that you started laughing before you even finished delivering it,” I reminded him.

“I know,” McCain laughed. “I know.”

Over the next 30 minutes, McCain took questions about everything from Iraq to South Carolina, his superstitions to Hillary Clinton. He was asked about the possibility of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg entering the race as an independent, and McCain had nice words to say about his potential rival. Someone asked if Bloomberg would make a good vice president, and McCain thought aloud about the potential positives and negatives of such an arrangement. “I don’t know how you could nominate a pro-choice VP without a real backlash from the party,” he said, specifically raising concerns that a pro-choice vice presidential nominee would run counter to a “fundamental” principle of the Republican party. Rick Davis, who appeared mildly concerned about the direction of the discussion, jumped in to clarify. Then he wandered off leaving McCain alone with the journalists.

When Davis returned a few minutes later, he joked about the candidate’s proclivity to say things he shouldn’t. “What’s he doing now, naming his vice president?” Davis asked, shaking his head.

A few moments later, someone asked McCain about comments Lindsey Graham had made earlier in the day. The South Carolina senator had suggested that it would be better for McCain to face Barack Obama in a general election than Hillary Clinton.

McCain rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Ahhhhh, thanks Lindsey! How could you possibly determine that when it depends on how they come out of this campaign. .  .  . You know Lindsey. He has a degree of clairvoyance that I am not gifted with. You know one thing about Lindsey, he’s always right.”

Listening to McCain respond to questions, it is clear that he thinks his national security credentials will be his greatest asset in the final weeks of this Republican primary and going forward in the general election.

Democrats, he says, lack the experience and judgment to govern in these times. “I think they’ve gotten themselves out on the far left on national security.  .  .  . Yeah, I’d bomb Pakistan,” he says, mocking Democrats. “Okay, yeah, I’d bomb Pakistan. I want the troops out. No, I want them out next week. No, I want them out today. I’d have had them out yesterday!”

Responding to another question, he singles out Hillary Clinton and her claim last fall that to concede the surge was working would require “a willing suspension of disbelief.”

“I know this: If I was debating her you’d certainly hear that phrase again–you’d have to ‘suspend disbelief in order to believe that Petraeus strategy is succeeding.’ I’d say, ‘How’s your disbelief factor today?’ I mean really! We’re all responsible for what we say. That’s just a difference, a fundamental difference, about where we are on Iraq. So that’s where I’m at, and it’s why nearly 4,000 American lives have been sacrificed. I don’t think that’s partisan. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ventilating that issue. They were wrong! And they still haven’t admitted we were right. So I think our strength is national security.”

That he also believes this is his own competitive advantage over the four Republicans he must beat to win the presidential nomination became clear shortly after we landed in Charleston.

A small caravan of SUVs and a bus for the press made their way to The Citadel for McCain’s first post-New Hampshire speech in the Palmetto State. The grounds of the famous military college were virtually empty other than a couple of female cadets in matching gray shirts and navy shorts returning from a jog. At 6 P.M., the tones of “Retreat” and then “To the Colors” echoed through Summerall Field, a large rectangular lawn surrounded by white buildings that appeared imposing in the slightly haunting dusk.

McCain made a couple of light jokes, but he seemed much more serious than he had earlier in the day, at his stops in Michigan. His remarks focused almost exclusively on national security, and he made them without lurching from subject to subject, as he sometimes does in his extemporaneous stump speech.

“The challenges that we face are long and tough and difficult. I think you know that we are in a struggle with an enemy that is implacable and unpardonable and they will commit any evil, any atrocity, to try to gain their way and destroy everything we stand for. Believe me, they’ll cut off the head of a person just because they’re American and Jewish and put it on the Internet.” His voice was filled with disgust. “A few months ago Lindsey and I, actually it was about a year ago, while we were in Iraq. And there were two guys in a car with two small infants in the back seat. They go through a checkpoint, they were waved through, they got out of the car, walked away, blew up the car.” The audience murmurs in horror. “If they’ll kill their own kids, what do you think they’ll do to our kids?”

He added: “I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever surrender.”

The words sounded almost childish, like something that might come out of the mouth of a three-year-old trying hard to sound emphatic but incapable of coming up with words to do the job. A couple of people in the crowd even snickered. But at that moment something very powerful was coming from the former prisoner of war who endured severe torture after repeatedly refusing to accept offers from his North Vietnamese captors to release him.

It was a political pitch to the South Carolinians he wants to vote for him, yes. But it also felt like a promise McCain was making to his country, to never surrender, and to himself. Ever.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.