The McCain campaign is trying to get serious—if only the candidate would grow up

This article is from the July/August issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.

You guys are way too easy on him." I hear that a lot when I tell people I've spent most of the presidential election covering John McCain. Most memorably, Ben Affleck spouted this criticism as he gestured with wife Jennifer Garner's purse in a hotel driveway after the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Perhaps Ben has a point.

In the past year, McCain has dropped his opposition to George Bush's tax cuts; he's embraced the Christian right; he's remained stubbornly supportive of the Iraq war. Yet we tend to cover him as though he doesn't really mean any of it. His missteps—confusing Sunnis and Shi'ites, making an impolitic musical joke about bombing Iran, or admitting with a wink that he doesn't know jack about economics—don't get the kind of red-siren gaffe-tastic coverage as those of other politicians. Why? Because McCain's constant, almost obsessive level of press access gives the media a depth of knowledge about him that makes playing "gotcha" feel, well, as trivial as it probably should in all cases. Also, the McCain show is a good deal more fun to watch than Gigli.

It's this latter point that doesn't get talked about as much: Covering McCain is a blast. He genuinely likes reporters: He'll joke with us about our drinking habits, playfully request our cell phones in the middle of a call and tell some unsuspecting editor or parent that the phone's owner has just been hauled off to rehab, and engage in gleefully sarcastic banter about both our colleagues and his. The campaign's atmosphere of hectic improvisation—its freewheeling "what-the-fuck-ness"—is entirely absent from the more disciplined outfits he's run against. With the nomination in hand and Secret Service personnel now on board, he has, it's true, lost some of that flavor of adventure. But even now, the campaign has found ways to circumvent the traditional narratives of a Republican nominee.

Like in April, when McCain started a tour that would take him to several of the poorest communities in America—places that, as a staffer put it, "Republicans won't go." I went along.

Birmingham, Alabama
I arrive at the hotel in downtown Birmingham while my colleagues are busing back from Gee's Bend, an isolated former sharecropping community 122 miles to the south, where McCain held an event. In the lobby, a team of fresh-scrubbed volunteers—girls in skirts, boys in ties—stand attentively in front of a table draped in pink cloth. Envelopes bearing the names of my colleagues are neatly laid out in alphabetical order. "Can I help you?" two of the volunteers say at once, laughing sweetly.

When I began traveling with McCain in the spring of 2007, his operations were not so tight. Short on funds and paralyzed by internal strife, the campaign seemed to be going belly-up just as Mitt Romney was surging. For the handful of us that hung around, McCain was compulsively, absurdly available. But the travel schedule was a constantly evolving mystery, and the hotels were generally, well, shitty. (The Wayfarer Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, had leaky ceilings, plasticky sheets, televisions that didn't carry any of the major news channels, and, worst of all, a hotel bar that closed at 9 p.m.) McCain's tiny staff was much too overwhelmed figuring out how to get from point A to point B to worry about our comfort.

At one point, the campaign was so cash-strapped they stopped feeding us. To be fair, they stopped buying food for themselves as well. One overly bright, hungover morning in some steamy New England diner, a senior aide bought a bag of breakfast sandwiches with his own credit card and started handing them out. Which is how I ended up sitting beside John McCain with a mouthful of bacon and no questions to ask him. While other major campaigns are run like corporate events, McCain's was like Harold & Kumar Go to Concord. The pink tablecloths and meticulously arranged orientation kits underscore how different things are these days.

The changes began last January, after McCain's surprise win in the New Hampshire primary. The next morning, a bleary press crew boarded a private charter out of Manchester at 6 a.m. Our ranks had swelled almost tenfold overnight, to something like 50. I had an interview scheduled with the candidate during the flight, so once we reached cruising altitude, I picked my way to the panels separating the first-class cabin, where he was sitting with his wife, Cindy, and his daughters Meghan and Sidney. McCain looked up from his newspaper and motioned me over. "Ana! Have a seat!" he said. I sat. He asked if I minded if he finished the paper before we started. I didn't. "Would you like a section?" he asked. No, I replied, I'd just go over my notes.

"Suns are going to acquire Shaq," he grunted, not really expecting an answer. Meanwhile, one of his aides was glaring at me. After the interview—mostly about his relationship with the party base, blah, blah, blah—the aide buttonholed me.

"You can't just go up there! You have to wait for one of us," she said plaintively. "Things have changed!"

Things kept on changing. Travel on planes is much less conducive to a road-trip vibe, and the freewheeling bull sessions have become much rarer. In the old days, McCain likely would have traveled from Gee's Bend back to Birmingham on the press bus. Today he took off for a fund-raiser in an SUV.

I find two of McCain's senior staffers drinking beers on the patio of the Birmingham hotel (you always find reporters and campaign staff at hotel bars). Steve Schmidt, McCain's top strategist, and Mark Salter, a long-serving and long-suffering advisor, are on their second round. Other reporters, back after a slow and bumpy bus trip, trickle in after a while. Discussion turns to the events at Gee's Bend, including the moment when an elderly black women, a quiltmaker, sang gospel songs to McCain.

"Awwwwk-waaaard," opines a television producer.

"Come on, now," Salter says, sipping his beer. "It was moving!" Eyes are rolled. This is what passes for spin in McCain World.

This whole trip is predicated on the press passing along the sort of scenes we're discussing now. "It's the 'McCain Visits the Poor Black People Tour,'" notes someone. "McCain Visits the Poor and/or Black People Tour," I correct—the people of Inez, Kentucky, a later stop, are mostly white. Salter scowls.

Youngstown, Ohio
This part of Ohio has lots of empty strip malls, payday lenders, and "For Sale" signs. I see, for the first time, an actual rusted factory. This is where McCain will speak.

Reporters are incredulous. "Really? He's going to give a speech in front of an empty factory?" Journalists are forever second-guessing campaigns. We like to think we're the ones who get to decide if a photo op is a good one, if that day's message is smart, if the "optics" of an event are optimal—"optics" being consultant-speak for "how something plays in the press."

Today, the optics do not seem promising. McCain is an avid supporter of free trade in general, and NAFTA in particular. Voters in the Midwest tend to blame NAFTA for the leakage of jobs from their region, and the empty factory is a symbol of those losses. It's like Bush giving a speech about staying the course in Iraq posed before a field of flag-draped coffins.

McCain delivers his remarks gamely from underneath the squatting hulk of the empty structure. "Education and retraining is working," he says, repeating himself for emphasis. It occurs to me that his intonation is the same as for another favorite stump-speech phrase: "The surge is working. The surge is working." I half expect him to continue in this vein, positively subbing in one threat to American society for another; instead of Al-Qaeda, it would be, "Joblessness is on the run, but it is not defeated. Joblessness is on the run, but it is not defeated."

Paintsville, Kentucky
McCain has not accompanied us here. He's still in Ohio, attending a fund-raiser in Toledo. But another version of the Straight Talk Express (there are about half a dozen) is waiting on the tarmac. Staffers begin to board, while reporters are headed over to a far less tricked-out coach.

I try—subtly, I think—to slip into the Straight Talk line, but Kimmie, the campaign enforcer, sternly corrals me. "Staff only," she says.

Fortunately, the new discipline wears off occasionally. That night, some other members of the press corps and I violate protocol, piling onto the Straight Talk with the campaign staff to drink booze we've smuggled into this dry county and watch election returns from Pennsylvania. The phrase "This is all off the record" is repeated several times with varying degrees of volume and emphasis.

Early the next morning, while dowsing for cell phone reception in the hotel parking lot, I peer in through the Straight Talk's open door. Salter, Schmidt, and another staffer are wiping down the floor, picking up empty cups, and cautiously sniffing the air to determine if the smell of stale beer is still lingering in the coach. This is below their pay grade, but as Salter points out, "no one else is up yet." The staffer whips out a can of Old Spice deodorant and sprays it into the air.

Later that morning, the Straight Talk picks up McCain at a nearby airport and heads for the Appalachian town of Inez, which happens to be the place where LBJ launched the War on Poverty. But Inez is still losing this war: The valleys (or "hollers") around town reveal a level of poverty unlike anything I've ever witnessed in my own country. Thin and dirty-looking kids stare at the bus as it passes by their dilapidated trailers and lean-tos. Most of us on the Straight Talk can't help but stare back.

Still, McCain's speech in the county courthouse in downtown Inez is not just well received, it is hungrily consumed by the overflowing crowd. They pop up for three standing ovations, while McCain discusses what government can't do for them: "Government can't create good and lasting jobs outside of government. It can't dig coal from the earth. It can't do your work for you. And you've never asked it to." But the loudest applause he receives isn't about politics or policy at all; it comes when he promises to return.

Outside the courthouse, three high school students wait patiently beside the Straight Talk to have their picture taken with McCain. One of two boys—sandy-blond with glasses—says of the visit: "Heck, it's the biggest thing that's happened here in 40 years." That is, since LBJ came through town. Finally, McCain exits the courthouse ... and straightaway gets into a pickup for some local sightseeing. No picture. The high schoolers are crestfallen.

On the Plane, En Route to New Orleans
Knots have formed around the senior aides—reporters stand in aisles and lean over seats. Schmidt lords over the conversation like a Mafia don. He has a shaved head, a fireplug-shaped body, and a wry demeanor that suddenly turns intense when a comment strikes him as unfair. In these situations, his eyelids lower, reptile-like, his lips purse, and his gaze hardens. He actually starts to look a bit like his old boss, Dick Cheney.

At the moment, he's parrying with one of the press corps' younger reporters. He's not angry—he's just playing with the kid like a cat toying with its food. The reporter guy is accusing Schmidt, and the whole McCain staff, of intentionally fraternizing with the press. "That's a bad thing?" Schmidt asks. "I don't want what I write to be influenced by liking you guys," the kid says. That's why he didn't come out to watch election returns on the bus the night before. Schmidt arches an eyebrow. "How do you know we'd let you on?"

New Orleans, Day One
The air is sticky and the bus is cooled to slightly above "refrigerate." Between sneezes, a few colleagues and I discuss dinner plans.

It used to be easy. You stood up on the bus and announced you were going to eat at whatever time. Now, the media entourage is big enough that various rivalries and feuds surface at mealtime. If, for instance, you're dining with campaign staff, there's a premium on intimacy. Dinner with a senior aide and six other reporters will pay off—in quotes, in relationship capital, in justifying expenses—more than dinner with a senior aide and 20.

Tonight is a rare occasion when neither the candidate nor his staff will be dining with journalists. So instead we just argue about where to go. I'm standing in the lobby with a television reporter when McCain enters. He's guided swiftly to a group of nicely dressed white guys, whom he greets with smiles and handshakes. Donors, probably.

Then, he sees us and walks over, his smile even broader. "Ana! Kelly!" he booms. "Good to see ya! Good to see ya!" He gives us each tight little half squeezes on the shoulders. Standing close to McCain, one often notices the strong scent of Purell—he apparently slathers the stuff on after shaking hands on the trail. He smiles and says, "Going to dinner? We're going to my favorite restaurant in the country!" He's referring to Commander's Palace, a Big Easy landmark. "See you tomorrow!" he says, waving on the way out. The TV reporter turns to me, shaking her head. "I've been doing this for 12 years and no candidate ever does that—just comes over to say hi."

New Orleans, Day Two
The local version of the Straight Talk is decorated like a brothel—all red velvet and gold trim. We get on and head to the Ninth Ward.

It's still hot and bright. The bus stops on a four-lane boulevard and after we're disgorged, Kimmie herds us over to two giant National Guard vehicles. They're like open-air Humvees, and getting into them requires a stepladder. Penned in, we watch McCain and his wife, and the precocious governor of Louisiana, 37-year-old Bobby Jindal, walk amid a gathering scrum of residents.

It dawns on us that McCain is walking around, talking to the people of the Ninth Ward, and that no reporters can actually hear him or even, really, tell what's going on. We see McCain shaking hands, nodding his head in concern, patting an old man on the back. "Wait! Wait! You mean no one is down there?" After a bit of shouting, a television crew, a photographer, and a print reporter jump off the truck—a hastily arranged "pool" that will feed their coverage back to everyone else.

Salter looks at us standing in the trucks and grins: "You all look like a bunch of refugees!"

In a press conference afterward, McCain blasts Bush for his inaction after Katrina. Across the street, a deserted beauty shop, windows boarded up, still promises "Free Airbrush or Marbling."

About half the crowd is made up of the neighborhood's black residents, whose skepticism is palpable. McCain asks if they have any questions. One woman asks, rhetorically, why—if they really want residents to attend—there aren't enough chairs? Another person opens his remarks with, "Now, I'm probably not going to vote for you, but..."

Among the crowd are some high school students from Massachusetts, mostly white, who are volunteering over spring break. "Who's that?" one asks. "That's John McCain," I whisper. "Oooooh." The eyes widen a little. "What's he doing here?" the kid asks. I whisper back, "I have no idea."

This article is from the July/August issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.