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 This is a look at what it's like to travel with these two one-time front-runners, at decisive moments in their efforts to claw back into contention in the White House campaign. They are one-day snapshots, taken from bus tours at different stages of the race and in different states, where the media and political strategies, geography and constituencies are vastly different.
The contrasts are striking, providing insight into two men who want to be president and how they're trying to get there.
In late December, McCain, knowing New Hampshire's looming primary was a do-or-die opportunity for his campaign, launched a two-day bus tour. A win was still considered a long-shot, but he had just piled up key newspaper endorsements and brought in the independent Sen. Joe Lieberman from nearby Connecticut to help him woo the state's key independent voters.
He woke up in a Courtyard Marriott hotel on the outskirts of snowy Concord, wandered without fanfare or handlers among coffee-drinking reporters and hotel guests in the lobby, and climbed onto his campaign's bus
-- one bus for the candidate, the press and his staff. McCain headed straight for a horseshoe-shaped table in the back where he holds court. What followed was 14 hours of nearly nonstop talk, as McCain fielded any question the journalists could think of and filled most of the time in between with six public events, where he took still more queries from voters.
This week, in Florida, it's Giuliani's turn for make-or-break voting.
He embarked on his own two-day tour on Sunday, hoping he could make the state's Jan. 29 primary his first win
-- and knowing he had to. While his rivals competed in the early voting states that Giuliani opted out of, his once-formidable lead in Florida had evaporated and put him in a four-way tie with McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Giuliani also woke up at a Marriott hotel, though this one was a luxury version on the bay, the Tampa Marriott Waterside. Aides clicked through the swank lobby in heels and suits, running a spit-and-polish operation that rivals the professionalism of the Bush White House (more on this later). The press boarded its bus, entirely separated from the candidate's bus. In fact, there was no Giuliani sighting at all until nearly 90 minutes later at an Italian restaurant, when he breezed through the "clear passageway" his staff insisted on maintaining. Eleven hours and four events later, he hadn't interacted with his traveling press corps in any way.
In short, McCain acts like a candidate who cultivates everyone, voters and media alike. Giuliani carries himself like he already occupies the Oval Office.
Giuliani's team borrows much from President Bush's White House, including some former staff. There are lots of shouted orders about loading up on buses and exactly where to stand at events. There's a detailed schedule for the day, one that looks just like the ones handed out on Bush trips, and lots of secrecy about what's coming two or even one day hence.
McCain's operation is casual by comparison. He got to places relatively on time, and the venues and backdrops were as stage-managed as anyone's. But it just had the air of having been put together by the seat of someone's pants.
Campaign buses are like traveling billboards; they're not subtle in their bumper-sticker attempt to capture everything the candidate wants people to know. With Giuliani pinning all his hopes on Florida, his bus fittingly blares: "Florida is Rudy Country. Tested. Ready. Now." McCain's reprises the moniker that earned him so much good press but not success in his 2000 White House race: "Straight Talk Express."
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 That leads to the Access Question.
Instead of talking to reporters, Giuliani sent surrogates to do it. Actor Jon Voight and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum rode the press bus on one 90-minute leg to chat strategy. McCollum may not be a household name nationally, but he is a veteran and a respected Florida pol. Voight, on the other hand is, well, an actor
-- and one who only met Giuliani recently.
McCain's willingness to take questions is famous. He winningly admits weaknesses, for instance saying at one point that the economy is an issue "I don't understand as well as I could." No topic is barred, and the conversation veers from politics to Pakistan to Russia to Iraq back to politics and books, families, jokes
-- whatever.
Reporters less than half his 71 years lose steam when he's still rearing to go.
There are other things about both candidates that charm at first and can be grating after many hours of repetition.
McCain starts every sentence he can with, "My friends ..." With Giuliani, it's his tendency to introduce thoughts with, "In reality ..."
When it comes to answering voters' questions, Giuliani is more of the traditional politician, using them mostly as mere jumping-off points to press a key message point. It's partly the difference between campaigning in huge Florida, where getting broader news coverage of an event is more important than appealing to the people in the room, and in New Hampshire, where voters are won the old-fashioned way, one by one.
Still, it is jarring when a woman in Tampa asked for Giuliani's thoughts on her Marine son, who has completed two tours in Iraq but lacks adequate income or health insurance, and he replied with a lecture about why it's important to dramatically expand the size of the U.S. military. Or when another woman, in the retirement town of Sun City Center, asked how all the tax cuts he is stressing would affect the government services on which many people depend and he gave this answer: Tax cuts must "be coordinated with some reduction in government spending as well
-- I agree with you."
For his part, McCain sometimes answers questions at his peril.
He told Michigan's voters little good news about the withering auto industry (and lost the state). At a company cafeteria in Concord, he told a woman he was not for what she was
-- dramatically expanding a popular government health insurance program for children. "I have to tell you things you don't want to hear as well as things you do want to hear," he said.
[Associated
Press; By JENNIFER LOVEN]
Jennifer Loven covers Bush's White House and relished the opportunity to check out the styles of his wannabe successors.
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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