Photos by Michael Woodall John McCain grins through a recent press conference where he answered questions about his faltering presidential campaign. The senator is no stranger to getting grilled by the media.

As reporters, pundits and bloggers plot John McCain’s political death, the 71-year-old and his struggling presidential campaign seem to be picking up speed. Is it all a mirage, or could the tough old man still make it to the White House?

It’s a miserable, why-do-we-live-in-Phoenix kind of day in August, and a nasty heat wave is about to drench another Labor Day weekend in humidity. The thermometer crawls to 113, and the pundits are grilling Arizona’s senior senator like a steak on the barbecue. McCain’s once promising run to the White House is out of synch, out of style and out of gas. Like Tony Soprano’s enemies, McCain’s campaign is sleeping with the fishes. A chorus of bloggers, talking heads and newspaper reporters has declared McCain dead and is blissfully digging his grave. And, of course, the media are never wrong when it comes to political predictions. Nevertheless, we’ll continue our story...


The 71-year-old stands inside a steamy meeting hall, praising the progress of the Iraq war and defending the need for comprehensive immigration legislation – two issues that haven’t gone over well with a frustrated and fractured American public. In about an hour, McCain will play the role of the surly politician as local reporters pester him about his depleted campaign coffers. Previous boasts of raising more than $100 million seem light years away.

“We’re doing fine,” McCain says curtly. “We’re doing just fine. I’m not answering any more questions about process.”

Before the press conference, it’s vintage McCain.

He is butter on a roll, smooth and satisfying to this socially conservative crowd, courtesy of the Latino Christian Political Action Committee. He’s part stand-up comic and part preacher, interspersing jokes about a prize-winning Iowa pig named “Big Red” with poignant tales of patriotism, heroism and sacrifice wrapped around his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The audience of Latino evangelical pastors soaks up the gospel according to McCain.

“The next time you go to Washington to visit your money, check out the Vietnam War Memorial,” McCain tells the Latino-dominated crowd. “Look at the names on the wall. It will strike you that a large number are Hispanic soldiers. They have been and still are very patriotic Americans.”

McCain effortlessly bobs and weaves, intertwining the spiritual benefits of prayer with the secular need for a strong military. He calls the bloodshed and violence of the Iraq war a case of “good versus evil.” Ever the warrior-politician, he unabashedly touts the “surge” of troops in Iraq – a policy he has been relentlessly backing since America invaded in 2003. McCain wears a constant reminder of the mismanaged mayhem and the lost youth on his right wrist, a blue Army bracelet that once belonged to Corporal Matthew Stanley. The bracelet has a stamp-sized photograph of the handsome 22-year-old from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, who was killed in Baghdad a few days before Christmas last year.

“I told Matthew’s mother I will do everything in my power to make sure his sacrifice was not in vain,” McCain tells the standing-room-only crowd of 200 folks who have squeezed into the room at a North Phoenix church. (A crowd of 75 was expected.) “I’ve said time after time that I understand the frustration and the sorrow of the American people. Our people have been surprisingly patient after four years of gross mismanagement.”

Toasty weather and doomsday predictions aside, today was actually not a funeral. What the crowd didn’t know was that they were witnessing the rebirth of John Sidney McCain III.

Senator Afterthought was morphing into the Comeback Kid. As people walked out into the sun-drenched church parking lot, the energy of the crowd demanded the question: Was John McCain becoming relevant again?

“You never take that powerful biography away from John McCain,” says John Zogby, a pollster from upstate New York who has followed McCain’s career for years. “You can never count him out.”