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 Tuesday night, it was different.
"I've got to savor the moment," the indefatigable warrior said as he at last laid claim to the Republican presidential nomination that had eluded him eight years ago.
It was a sweet victory for McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam whose life story has had a remarkable rise-and-fall-and-rise-again rhythm to it. His quest for the presidency has been no different.
Eight years ago this week, McCain folded his 2000 presidential campaign with a vow to "keep trying to force open doors where there are walls."
One wall after another presented itself to McCain in his quest for the nomination this time, and he broke through them all.
The long-ago front-runner for the 2008 nomination, McCain found his campaign in serious trouble by the time he made his candidacy formal last April.
He'd had to slash a bloated campaign staff as fundraising lagged and polls showed him sliding.
But McCain, a former Navy pilot, knew a thing or two about pressing forward in the face of adversity.
As a prisoner in Vietnam for more than five years, he'd been forced by his captors to sign a confession and later wrote that he doubted "I would ever stand up to any man again. Nothing could save me."
McCain, though, proved his resilience, and refused to accept release from Hanoi before prisoners who had been held longer.
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McCain latest comeback began in a war zone as well -- half a world away at a place called, fittingly enough, Camp Victory.
As his presidential campaign unraveled back home, McCain spent Independence Day 2007 at the sprawling American headquarters on the edge of Baghdad and watched in the heat as 588 U.S. troops re-enlisted. Afterward, the soldiers swarmed McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to thank them for their support.
Depressed, doubtful his campaign could prevail, McCain turned to Graham on the flight home and said, "We can't give up on those kids. ... We have to keep this campaign up."
McCain remembers the moment as a turning point.
Before long, he was traveling Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina on his "No Surrender" bus tour, an exhortation not only for the U.S. course in Iraq but also for himself.
"I was experienced enough to know that our campaign was in trouble," McCain later recalled. "But I was determined to struggle on."
McCain's new resolve after the Iraq trip last summer didn't lessen the disarray he confronted upon his return home. He had just laid off more than 50 campaign workers and slashed the pay of others. He had $2 million in the bank, a pittance for a presidential candidate. He was running in single digits in the polls in Iowa and South Carolina, two early voting states, trailing even Fred Thompson, who hadn't entered the race.
The death watch on his candidacy had begun, forcing him to bat away speculation he would drop out.
"Ridiculous," he insisted.
Not much earlier, McCain had been the candidate to beat in a crowded field of potential Republican candidates.
The 2006 midterm elections had barely ended when he'd taken his first formal steps toward a second presidential run, forming an exploratory committee and offering himself as a "commonsense conservative" in the tradition of Ronald Reagan. He worked to build ties to conservatives who had been alienated from his first presidential run in 2000.
McCain, who lost the GOP nomination to George W. Bush in 2000, created a powerhouse national organization for his second run, a command hierarchy akin to Bush's, in fact.
It almost flattened him.
The imposing structure didn't fit McCain, who's at his best as the scrappy insurgent, in close contact with voters, in easy give-and-take with reporters.
The play of world events worked against him, too.
The war in Iraq was going badly, hugely unpopular at home. Democrats in Congress were pushing for withdrawal. McCain, a four-term senator from Arizona, was the key backer of Bush's troop-increase strategy.
The emergence of immigration as a central political issue was a problem, too. McCain's support for an eventual path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants angered conservative Republicans.
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 And there were questions about his age, especially in a campaign year when the buzz was all about change.
McCain would be 72 by Inauguration Day, the oldest first-term president.
Comics had a field day.
Jay Leno joked that "No Country for Old Men," wasn't just a movie title, it was McCain's campaign slogan.
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Sometimes, the simplest explanations are the best.
John McCain came back by being John McCain. "Mac is Back," the signs proclaimed.
He rejected advice to shift his stance on Iraq. He picked himself up with a loyal coterie of aides and campaigned like he did in 2000, holding an unending string of town hall-style events where he laid himself bare for voters in the kind of intimate interaction that works best for him.
The staff departures resulted in a streamlined operation that suited McCain far better.
Events beyond McCain's control went his way, too.
The declining violence in Iraq vindicated his strong support of the military effort. Immigration became less of a campaign issue.
Mike Huckabee came out of nowhere to steal victory from Mitt Romney in Iowa, where McCain didn't compete. That gave McCain a bigger opening to grab momentum in New Hampshire, a state amenable to politics of redemption.
Rudy Giuliani's failure to take off in Florida helped cement McCain's status as the GOP front-runner.
McCain's pared-down campaign was likened to a pirate ship, a rapscallion's domain with hangers-on giving advice and keeping the candidate company.
Gone were the high-paid consultants.
In their place, a cadre of experienced hands who are volunteering their time
-- because they believe in the man. On the bus or on the plane, they huddle around McCain hashing out strategy and message.
McCain, who likes to say he's "older than dirt," with "more scars than Frankenstein," knows there is still a long way to go.
The campaign ahead, he said Tuesday, "will have its ups and downs." That was likely an understatement.
Questions about his age linger. His off-the-cuff wit and famous temper are sure to get him in trouble. His part in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal has been mentioned. More recently, he's had to answer questions about his relationship with a Washington lobbyist and her ties to business interests he dealt with on the Senate Commerce Committee.
Many GOP conservatives still don't trust him, citing his positions on issues such as immigration, campaign finance and global warming, as well as his feud with the religious right.
McCain, though, is steeled for whatever may come his way. His darkest moments likely are behind him.
During his imprisonment in Vietnam, he heroically refused to accept release before other U.S. servicemen who had been held longer.
But his captors eventually broke his will and he signed a confession stating that he was "a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate."
"All my pride was lost, and I doubted I would ever stand up to any man again," he wrote later. "Nothing could save me."
Time has proved him wrong about that.
[Associated
Press; By NANCY BENAC]
Associated Press writer Liz Sidoti contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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