Game Change_ Obama And The Clintons, McCain And Palin, And The Race Of A Lifetime Part 14

"And I took responsibility," Penn said sheepishly.

Clinton, apparently all talked out about the past, turned to the here and now. "So what should I be doing?" she said. "I'm trying to stay low and out of the line of fire and not get in the way between [Obama] and the voters."

Penn focused on Denver and the importance of Hillary's speech. "He's got to really make sure that the night goes well," he said. "The truth is, him making you vice president is the best way to guarantee it."

"There's no way-no way," she said. "He can't tolerate that."

Nothing was weighing on Clinton's mind more than her campaign debt. "Bill and I never leave a debt unpaid," she said. "It's just that, I was shocked at how little [the Obama campaign] will help us. They aren't going to help us. I really, I thought when I started this I might be able to get about five million out of them. . . . You know how much we've got so far?"

"Five hundred thousand?"

"No, one hundred thousand. He's not going to help."

"That's why I wanted to negotiate first, withdraw second. Right?"

"The press-I couldn't. I am held to such a different standard. We're trying to get somebody to cover the fact that I've done more to promote unity than anybody in a comparable position-Bradley . . . you name it, Tsongas, Jackson, Kennedy. But you know it was like they just beat the h.e.l.l out of me until I got out."

Penn ran through the latest poll numbers, expressing his view of Obama's chances against McCain as dicey.

"I want you to start thinking about how I avoid being blamed," Clinton said. "Because I shouldn't be blamed. But they are going to blame me. I somehow didn't do enough."

" 'She stayed in too long,'" Penn put in.

In a voice of mock horror, Clinton exclaimed, " 'Oh, she damaged him,' you know-screw you! I thought it was a compet.i.tive election. I can stay in as long as I want to stay in. Teddy Kennedy stayed in until the convention. Give me a break."

Penn, always on the lookout for business, said he wanted to try "to reconcile with the Obama campaign."

"They're never going to reconcile," Clinton said dismissively. "Ain't gonna happen. Ain't gonna happen. Ain't gonna happen. They are vindictive and small. They don't think they need me. They had that conversation with Bill, they never called and asked him to do anything. They don't care about a former president."

Clinton returned to Obama's prospects in the general election. "I think it's fifty-fifty whether he wins, right?" she said, noting that Obama's VP choice was critical, giving odds on whom he would pick: "Biden, one-in-two chance. Bayh, one-in-four chance. Kaine and Sebelius, both which I think are terrible choices, one-in-eight chance."

For a year and a half, Hillary had spent every waking moment not just trying to defeat Obama, but convincing herself that he was a lightweight, a nose-in-the-air elitist totally unfit to be the leader of the free world. A little more than a month after he ended her dream, she hadn't become unconvinced. But now she would be forced to sit back and watch him run against McCain-a man whom Clinton considered a friend, but one whose election would be tantamount to reelecting Bush to a third term.

"The campaign was a terrible disappointment," she said. "I hate the choice that the country's faced with. I think it is a terrible choice for our nation."

PART II.

Chapter Fifteen.

The Maverick and His Meltdown.

THE MORNING AFTER THE midterm elections of 2006, John McCain was in the community room of his condominium complex in Phoenix, Arizona, surveying the damage that had been inflicted on the Republican Party-and listening to his lieutenants talk about how he was primed to benefit. The night before, McCain and his wife, Cindy, had hosted a viewing s.h.i.+ndig in the same room, which Cindy had catered extravagantly, laying out an opulent spread. The remains of that feast were gone now, replaced by a modest breakfast buffet: fruit, juice, coffee, and those pastries that her husband liked so much.

McCain had been up until the wee hours. He needed that coffee. Arrayed around him were his chief political advisers: longtime stalwarts John Weaver, Rick Davis, Mark Salter, and Carla Eudy, along with a new presence, Terry Nelson. This was the first time they'd all been together to talk about 2008.

On a large-screen TV, the yakkers were yakking about the horrific results from the previous day. Republicans had lost everything: the House, the Senate, a majority of governors.h.i.+ps and state legislative chambers. (Nearly a hundred seats in McCain's beloved New Hamps.h.i.+re-that hurt!) McCain had seen it coming. Like Obama, he had been his party's top draw in the run-up to the midterms. With Bush holed up in the White House, toxically unpopular even in many red states, McCain had tirelessly traversed the country, offering aid to candidates in tough races, pus.h.i.+ng to save seats. But it was no use. "This is as bad as it's ever been" for the GOP, he told anyone who would listen.

McCain's advisers viewed the devastation as a bad news/good news story. On one hand, a poisonous environment would greet whomever the party chose as its nominee. On the other, those circ.u.mstances made it all the more likely that the nominee would be their boss.

Since 2000, when McCain waged a spirited but doomed challenge to Bush to become the Republican standard-bearer, the Arizona senator had been an icon. With his war heroism, famously independent streak, and reformist stances on matters such as campaign finance, McCain's maverick image was sterling. He was, as Weaver liked to put it, "the Good Housekeeping Good Housekeeping seal of approval in American politics." A familiar presence on the late-night talk show circuit, he was wry and funny; his winking irony and accessibility made him a favorite of the press. And though he'd spent years collecting Republican enemies by defying party orthodoxy-even flirting with the notion of becoming John Kerry's running mate-he had more recently embarked on a determined, and not unsuccessful, effort to redeem himself with the GOP Establishment. He had put aside his feud with Bush, supported the Iraq War, and built ties to conservative activists and donors. In a party governed by primogeniture, he was now the presumptive front-runner. seal of approval in American politics." A familiar presence on the late-night talk show circuit, he was wry and funny; his winking irony and accessibility made him a favorite of the press. And though he'd spent years collecting Republican enemies by defying party orthodoxy-even flirting with the notion of becoming John Kerry's running mate-he had more recently embarked on a determined, and not unsuccessful, effort to redeem himself with the GOP Establishment. He had put aside his feud with Bush, supported the Iraq War, and built ties to conservative activists and donors. In a party governed by primogeniture, he was now the presumptive front-runner.

A front-runner's operation was very much what his advisers had in mind. McCain's bid in 2000 had been a ragtag affair, more cause than campaign. In 2008 his team proposed the polar opposite. They would build a battles.h.i.+p that was st.u.r.dy, well funded, disciplined, imposing. Outsider romance would be sacrificed for insider clout. The model they were mimicking was the one that beat them. They were aiming to create a McCainiac emulation of the Bush machine.

The architect of that approach was Weaver, the forty-seven-year-old Texan strategist who'd been McCain's political guru for a decade. Lanky and laconic but intense, Weaver had temporarily left the Republican Party in a huff, disillusioned by the Bush campaign's dismantling of McCain. But Weaver was convinced that McCain belonged in the White House, and he had come to see the Bush model as the best means of making it happen. To that end, Weaver had imported Nelson, who in 2004 had served as the Bush team's political director, to be campaign manager. He and Weaver were all about going big: big endors.e.m.e.nts, big donors, big spending.

Bigness didn't sound too bad to Davis, either. A Was.h.i.+ngton lobbyist by trade, Davis, also forty-seven, had managed McCain's last run. He was loyal, fleet, droll, and aimed to please. Despite McCain's expressed disdain for the culture of Beltway banditry, he always wanted Davis on his team. The guy got things done, and Cindy loved him. He would be McCain's campaign chief executive.

The planning for McCain's run had been slowly building for months; this meeting, in a way, was both a culmination and a launch. Davis talked about operations, everything from budgets to office s.p.a.ce to a proposed logo. Weaver presented a strategic overview, discussing the calendar, organization, and McCain's compet.i.tors. The field hadn't fully taken shape, but it was looking weak. There was Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, whose universal name recognition put him at the top of the national polls, but whose social liberalism would make him a hard sell in an ever-more-conservative Republican Party. There was Mitt Romney, the former governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, who was handsome, rich, and successful-but unknown across the country and a Mormon, a faith regarded by many Evangelicals and Catholics with suspicion and distrust. The rest were a collection of the anonymous, the toothless, and the marginal. Certainly there was no one on the horizon who possessed the attribute that was making McCain look so good to so many Republicans, even those whose instinctive reaction to him was to balk: he was the only GOP candidate who appeared capable of beating Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination.

Through the whole presentation, McCain sat there looking vaguely bored, saying almost nothing. His detachment was striking, but not entirely unusual. If all candidates fall along a range from micromanagers to hands-off delegators, McCain deserved a category all his own: ultra-laissez-faire. In his rational brain, he knew that a serious presidential effort required scores of staffers, high-priced consultants, polling, advertising, policy development, and more. But he really just didn't give a s.h.i.+t. The details made his head hurt. A fighter pilot through and through, McCain liked to follow his instincts. He envisioned himself getting in his jet and taking off; whatever he left behind on the carrier deck ceased to exist in his consciousness. All that mattered was him, the plane, and the mission. His approach to political combat was the same. Wherever he was, whatever he was saying, whoever was listening-that was the campaign. The rest was noise. As far as McCain was concerned, he could win the election with a roster of events, a few was the campaign. The rest was noise. As far as McCain was concerned, he could win the election with a roster of events, a few Meet the Press Meet the Press appearances, and a sheaf of airplane tickets. appearances, and a sheaf of airplane tickets.

Even so, this was a pretty important meeting, his advisers thought. Yet McCain seemed absent, as if he didn't want to be there. When Weaver finished laying out plans for the months ahead, McCain finally opened his mouth and said, Do we really have to start this early?

Nelson gazed on in disbelief. He'd been on board only a couple of weeks, after McCain, wearing a dress s.h.i.+rt and his boxer shorts (a favorite outfit of his), offered him the job in a hotel room somewhere.

Now, for neither the first time nor the last, Nelson looked at his new boss and wondered, Do you really want to be president? Do you really want to be president?

THE TRUTH WAS, MCCAIN had a lot of reasons to dread the start of the race. For all his progress in making himself more acceptable to the Establishment, he knew that winning his party's nomination would be no cakewalk. Conservative activists still distrusted him for his apostasies on taxes, campaign reform, interrogation techniques, and judges. The religious right would never warm to him. And there were plenty of Establishmentarians who saw his legendary temper as a problem of no small consequence. Some worried his hotheadedness made him unsuited for the Oval Office; others, that he might blow his stack in public and blow up his candidacy. Though he'd been better in recent years at keeping his petulance at bay (or under wraps), McCain was still p.r.o.ne to outbursts of profanity-sometimes in front of campaign volunteers-that made his advisers wince.

Iraq, too, had become a problem for McCain, politically and emotionally. He was a military man, from a family of officers. He worried about the safety of the troops, including his own sons, two of whom were in the service. Long before the campaign began, McCain burned over what he saw as the Bush administration's mismanagement of the conflict, and he was carrying that anger into the race. "Just incompetent," he'd say. "Just terrible."

McCain had been outspoken in pressing Bush to commit more U.S. forces to Iraq, even as Americans had turned decisively against the war and favored a timetable for withdrawal. His advisers warned him that his stance was damaging him politically, hurting him with voters as well as donors. He didn't care. "You're not gonna get me to change my opinion on Iraq," McCain would say. "I'd rather lose the campaign than lose a war."

By late 2006, McCain had another vulnerability, and an unexpected one. Suddenly, out of nowhere, his status as a media darling was fading. He was losing the const.i.tuency he had proudly, and only half-jokingly, called "my base."

Once, McCain could do no wrong in the eyes of the press. Now, when he engaged in a rapprochement with the Reverend Jerry Falwell or favored tax cuts, the media scalded him for what it deemed transparent efforts to curry favor with the right. When he embraced the Iraq War more fervently than Bush, columnists didn't praise his adherence to principle, they scorched him for being out of step with the country. His treatment in the blogosphere was even worse.

The new media reality depressed McCain, and the time-honored backroom ch.o.r.es of politics didn't thrill him much, either. Like his friend Hillary Clinton, he found pleading for money and endors.e.m.e.nts about as pleasant as a hot poker in the eye. Also like Hillary, McCain took his work in the Senate seriously, especially now on Iraq.

Through the fall of 2006, Weaver and Salter fretted over McCain's gut. Salter, at fifty-one, was McCain's speechwriter and the co-author of all his books, as well as his supremely patriotic and fatalistic alter ego. Don't just drift into a presidential, he warned McCain. You've got to decide you really want to do this.

Salter and Weaver were well aware that two other concerns were weighing heavily on McCain. The first was Cindy's opposition to his running. The Bush campaign's demolition of her husband had taken place in South Carolina, amid shadowy attacks that had wounded her lastingly and deeply. Most despicable was the smear campaign alleging that the McCains' younger daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh, was John's illegitimate child from a liaison with a black prost.i.tute. But there were also rumors spread that Cindy was a drug addict and that John's long captivity in Vietnam had left him mentally unstable.

South Carolina was never far from Cindy's mind. The thought of it being repeated made her sick. She wasn't merely press shy, she was just plain shy, and she was worried about her servicemen sons, Jack and Jimmy-and especially about Jimmy, a Marine headed for a tour of duty in Iraq. Her fear was that he might be targeted for harm if his father were a candidate.

As the end of 2006 approached, McCain continually told his team, Cindy isn't ready. His advisers tried to rea.s.sure her: things would be different this time; she would be protected. But Cindy wanted guarantees, some of them impossible to offer-that the children would be able to maintain their privacy, for instance. Gradually, eventually, her stance softened. The McCains were a military family, and if John wanted to serve, Cindy wasn't going to stand in his way. Four words defined her ethic: "I support my husband." Yet even then she made no bones about being unhappy that John was making the race or about her refusal to play a large or public role. Smiling, nodding, shaking the occasional proffered hand? Fine. Daily events, multistate trips, full-on surrogacy? Not gonna happen.

What gave the McCainiacs even greater pause were John's frequent references to his age and physical condition. McCain was sixty-nine and a cancer survivor. I'm not the man I was when I ran in 2000, he said. Presented with schedules packed with events from early morning until late at night, McCain would say, "Are you guys trying to kill me?"

There was nothing lighthearted about his tone-he was cranky, peevish. When his staff sang hosannas to his stamina, he would wave them off.

One day, McCain asked Weaver if he was simply too old to run.

"Only you can tell us that," said Weaver.

"Let's do it . . . I guess," McCain replied.

THE FRONT-RUNNER'S CAMPAIGN got under way in December 2006. And just as McCain's advisers wanted it to be, it was Bush-scale big-at least on paper.

The initial budget devised by Davis was a monster. The fund-raising plan called for the campaign to haul in a record $48 million in the first quarter of 2007. That figure was derived largely by looking at the numbers that Bush had racked up in his 2004 campaign-as an inc.u.mbent president with the best-oiled cash-acc.u.mulating apparatus ever a.s.sembled (in the pre-Obama era, that is). Yet n.o.body seemed to question whether that was an appropriate yardstick.

At the same time, Weaver and Nelson-who were responsible for spending, while Davis and Eudy handled the collecting of cash-began hiring dozens of high-end consultants and staffers, many of them veterans of the Bush team in 2004. They opened offices around the country and rented s.p.a.ce for an enormous headquarters not far from Clinton's, in suburban northern Virginia.

The split structure of McCainworld was no accident. From the moment the November meeting in Phoenix ended, there were two McCain campaigns, one led by Weaver and one by Davis, two men with a long-standing history of personal enmity. No one could really explain where it had begun, but it was so profound they could barely stand to be in the same room together. Weaver had brought in Nelson partly to keep Davis from being campaign manager. By January, John and Terry were lobbying to have Rick canned.

McCain had known all along that Weaver and Davis detested each other. His att.i.tude toward it was studied indifference. Like Hillary, McCain valued loyalty above all else and avoided confrontation at all costs. He instructed Weaver, Davis, Nelson, and Salter (who didn't much care for Davis, either), "I don't want any more decisions being made unless all four of you agree." But that was only a recipe for gridlock and feuding, which quickly became the hallmarks of McCainworld, just as they were in Hillaryland.

There was no ignoring the ramifications when it came to money, though. While Weaver and Nelson were spending like whiskey-addled sailors, the campaign's early efforts to raise cash through direct mail and on the Web were falling flat. Many would-be contributors were turned off by McCain's ardent support for Bush's just-announced troop surge in Iraq. Making matters worse, McCain spent December engaging in a pa.s.sive-resistance boycott against calling donors or attending fund-raisers.

By the start of 2007, the campaign was already more than $1 million in the red. And McCain had virtually no finance events on his schedule for the first two months of the year. The candidate was livid, but he blamed the problem not on the fund-raising, but on the campaign's spending.

The first sign of trouble was when McCain made his maiden visit to his campaign fortress in Alexandria, Virginia, in the middle of January. Carrying a Starbucks cup, he walked into the war room and found sixty-odd people (some of whom were unpaid interns, though he didn't know that) gathered there to greet him. He stopped in his tracks, his mandible dropping to his sternum. He turned in a slow circle, took it all in, mumbled a few words of greeting and thanks, and then stormed off in the direction of Nelson's office.

"What the f.u.c.k are all these people doing here?" he yelled at his campaign manager. "Where are we getting the money to pay for all of this? What is it they do? Get rid of half of them."

Not long after, McCain examined the personnel lists, looking for cuts, and grew incensed. "I am not f.u.c.king authorizing these f.u.c.king hires," he insisted to Nelson. "Why do we need all these people? Who are these f.u.c.king Bush people? Where is the f.u.c.king money?"

McCain's reaction to the spending was even worse on the road. When he hit the trail in the winter months of 2007, he saw evidence of excess all around him, and would call Nelson and Weaver in a fury. Why did there have to be a live band at one of his events? Why were there two two boxes of donuts on his campaign bus? boxes of donuts on his campaign bus?

Then there was the bus itself, an upgraded version of McCain's fabled Straight Talk Express from 2000. The sleek new rig had deluxe furnis.h.i.+ngs, satellite television, a fancy bathroom, a full kitchen, and a big private office that doubled as a bedroom. Cindy mocked it as a "rolling Ritz-Carlton."

As the cash crunch mounted into March and McCain's fits became more frequent, Weaver reached a breaking point. Everyone is at fault for not vetting the fund-raising plan-including you, he told McCain.

"We started too f.u.c.king early," McCain replied. "We should have waited. I shouldn't be running right now."

"We didn't choose to be the front-runner," Weaver said. "We are are the front-runner. We have to conduct ourselves as the front-runner." the front-runner. We have to conduct ourselves as the front-runner."

Weaver warned McCain that the first-quarter fund-raising numbers were due out soon and they were going to be bad. He wasn't kidding. Released in early April, the figures revealed that McCain had raised a meager $12.5 million-$35.5 million shy of the campaign's original projections. Worse, he had finished third among his rivals; Romney led the pack with $21 million, while Giuliani had raised $15 million. The press coverage was brutal.

Weaver, Nelson, and Salter met McCain in his Senate office to talk about how to improve the balance sheet. Salter and Weaver bellowed back and forth with McCain, but they all agreed on the bottom line: if they didn't fix their financial situation, they didn't need to worry about laying people off. McCain's campaign would be over before the race had even started.

"f.u.c.k YOU! f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k!!!"

McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife's face. He was angry; she had interrupted him. Cindy burst into tears, but, really, she should have been used to it by now.

Cindy Lou Hensley had always looked like a beauty queen (or a senator's wife) with her ice-blue eyes and flaxen waves and delicate mien. She first met John McCain in Hawaii, where he was a war hero still recovering from his injuries, still married to his first wife, Carol. Phoenix-born Cindy was just twenty-four, and wildly smitten with the das.h.i.+ng older man in his dress whites. Within a few months, she was a misty military wife, saluting and serving.

A quarter of a century and four children later, the dazzle had faded, even as the duty and the bond remained. But for all her taut Stepford smiles, Cindy was no typical political spouse. She was the sole heir to her family's multimillion-dollar beer distribution business and chair of the company. She loved her home in Arizona, her job, her charities, and, above all, her children. While John spent months and months in D.C., she maintained her base and raised the kids. The setup worked for both of them.

When she was dragged back into campaign service in 2007, Cindy wanted to be an a.s.set to her husband. But they were so fixed in their ways, so unused to compromise or relinquis.h.i.+ng control, they could barely remain polite. John was impatient and indifferent, Cindy intent on a.s.serting her needs. After an argument over a Secret Service detail-Cindy wanted the protection; John hated the intrusion-she flounced back to Phoenix. When you get it, call me, Cindy said, and I'll come back on the trail, but otherwise I'm going home.

She summoned her husband out of campaign discussions to talk about Jimmy, over in Iraq. If their daughter Meghan, out on the stump, complained to her mother about blogosphere attacks on the family or annoying staffers a.s.signed to her, Cindy would throw a fit. She'd agree to attend events and rallies, and then cancel abruptly.

The McCains fought in front of others, during small meetings and before large events, to the amazement and discomfort of the staff. Things could escalate quickly. She cursed him; he cursed her. She cried; he apologized. Cindy fought back, too. I never wanted you to run for this, she said. You ruined my life. It's all about you. When it came time to film campaign videos of the couple, the camera crews had to roll for hours to capture a few minutes of warmth.

There were moments of tenderness, to be sure. When Cindy was depressed or overwhelmed, John was able to cheer her up or calm her down. He implored his staff to accommodate his wife, and refused to make any major decisions without her input. They were aware of each other's quirks and needs, crazy about their children, and they talked to each other by phone all day long. They looked after each other's health, and often served as staunch mutual protectors.

But there were also rumors. In the spring of 2007, whispers from Arizona reached Salter and Weaver that Cindy had been spotted at a Phoenix Suns basketball game with another man. The man was said to be her long-term boyfriend; the pair had been sighted all over town in the last few years.

Members of the McCain senior staff discussed the unsettling news, amid their growing concerns that Cindy's behavior had been increasingly erratic of late. Weaver and others suspected that the Cindy rumor was rooted in truth. It was upsetting, Weaver believed, but not a threat. The legitimate press would never write about a spouse's personal life-unless that spouse was Bill Clinton.

Then the campaign heard that a supermarket tabloid was working on the story. It could blow up at any time. At a meeting in mid-April, Team McCain prepared a full-bore media plan to deal with the fallout if the story broke. Soon after, Weaver delicately approached McCain. Did he know about this? Could he talk to Cindy?

McCain appeared distraught, but not surprised. He seemed aware of the situation, and, incredibly, suggested it was a matter he preferred be dealt with by the staff.

This is something a husband needs to do, Weaver told him.

McCain called his wife. She denied an affair. You'll have to come out on the road with me, he told her. You'll have to travel more now. People will need to see us together.

So she did. Davis, who'd always gelled with Cindy, was a.s.signed to spend more time with her, and for a while she was by her husband's side at rallies and town halls, just in case the story bubbled up-or bubbled over.

THERE WAS SILENCE ON the small charter flight from New York to New Hamps.h.i.+re on April 24. McCain was on his way, finally, finally finally, to officially kick off his candidacy the next day. Weaver, Salter, and Nelson were steaming mad. With no money, a feuding staff, and the stench of loserdom setting in, they'd been working for weeks on an idea for the announcement that would jolt McCain's campaign back to life. The candidate had signed off on it-but now, just hours beforehand, he had changed his mind.

"I don't want to do it," McCain said to Weaver. "And I don't want to argue about it."

"This far down the road, you owe us a chance to discuss it," Weaver angrily replied. But no discussion was forthcoming.

The idea was as simple as it was radical: a one-term pledge. McCain would promise that if he won the White House, he would spend four years in residence and then step down. The pledge would embody the theme that McCain cared only about solving the country's problems and not about indulging his ambition. It would say that he was going to tackle the hardest issues-Iraq, immigration, ethics, ent.i.tlements, runaway spending-with no regard for reelection. It would mitigate what the campaign's polling showed was his most significant liability: his age. It would be a bold statement about political sacrifice, a larger-than-life, maverick move.

Salter and Weaver had come up with the pledge and pushed it hard. McCain had reservations, but knew his campaign needed electroshock. His advisers plotted the rollout, taking extraordinary steps to keep the idea quiet, fearing that the loose-lipped McCain would spill the beans himself. The announcement speech was written. The press release was drafted. All systems were go.

But not everyone thought the pledge was a good idea. Some considered it crazy, in fact. One of them was Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator who was one of McCain's closest friends; another was Rick Davis. They told McCain that the pledge would marginalize him and the office of the presidency. That it would make him a lame duck from day one.

A few hours before the flight to New Hamps.h.i.+re, McCain was with Cindy in New York at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, looking over his remarks. When Salter and Brett O'Donnell, McCain's speech coach, arrived, McCain startled them by saying he was having doubts about the pledge. Meghan McCain entered the suite and trashed the idea, saying it was lame. Her dad now apparently agreed.

The next day, it was damp and chilly in Portsmouth for the kickoff. Dressed casually in a sweater, looking grim and awkward, McCain stood next to Cindy. His speech, having been hurriedly purged of all references to the pledge, was a disjointed mess. Later, in Manchester, McCain gave it again at Veterans Memorial Park downtown. Weaver looked around at the vast s.p.a.ce and said, "You could have a f.u.c.king Rolling Stones concert here." But the park was nearly empty.

MCCAIN'S CAMPAIGN WAS FORMALLY off the ground, but it remained a hugely troubled enterprise. The candidate was depressed and fatigued, feeling helpless, picked to pieces by something he couldn't control. He contemplated how much better his life would be if he just pulled the plug on his campaign. If I'd known this before, I never would have run If I'd known this before, I never would have run, McCain thought. "This wasn't the campaign I wanted," he told his advisers.

Long gone was the tough, spry McCain of the 2000 race, the c.o.c.ky, joyous McCain of the Senate. This McCain was angry, angry every single day, as angry as Weaver had ever seen him. McCain knew what was being said about his implosion; he obsessively read the papers and the tip sheets, collected political gossip, and watched cable news. A mocking Maureen Dowd column could ruin his entire day.

"The press is out to get me" became McCain's new catchphrase. No more was he accompanied by a merry band of accomplices filing stories about his charm. Now, trailing behind him, eager to catch every snort and frown, were stern scribes, overcaffeinated bloggers, and curious civilians with camera phones.

McCain was erupting over everything. At a scheduling meeting to discuss Meghan's college graduation, McCain learned that the commencement was a multiday affair that would require him to make several round trips to New York. "How many f.u.c.king times do I have to go to f.u.c.king New York this week?" he yelled. "How many f.u.c.king times can you f.u.c.king graduate from f.u.c.king Columbia?"

Agitating him further was a policy debate about which he cared greatly, and for which he was catching major flak. The issue was immigration reform. With Bush's support, Congress was taking up a proposal that would allow a path to citizens.h.i.+p for some illegal immigrants. In late May, McCain stood alongside Ted Kennedy and announced his support for the bill.

Weaver and Salter begged McCain to ease up. He was already the face of the Iraq surge. Now he was becoming the face of what opponents called "amnesty." Just tone down the rhetoric, his advisers pleaded.