CONCORD, N.C. — A couple thousand people saw John McCain at a rally here last week. But the national media was not among them. Reporters were stuck behind some bleachers -- with no view of the stage.
It might have been illuminating to hear the exchanges afterward, as the Republican nominee for president greeted voters who surged toward the stage. But reporters were kept in their place, far to the rear.
Back on the Straight Talk Express, McCain's campaign plane, the candidate remained firmly planted in the forward cabin. A brown curtain blocked the aisle, ensuring that reporters and photographers would see little, if anything, of him.
Venturing out for one last spin on the campaign trail before election day, I found one thing missing from the McCain campaign: John McCain. Or at least the old John McCain.
I traveled with the Arizona senator more than a year ago and then again shortly before his breakthrough win in the New Hampshire primary. His No Surrender Tour bus rumbled for hours through Iowa cornfields and past postcard-perfect New Hampshire villages.
And you could not shut the man up. One moment, McCain would recount a long-ago romance in Brazil, or rhapsodize about an Eisenhower biography, or worry about the starting rotation of his Arizona Diamondbacks. The next, he would delve into the challenges presented by the Iraq war or dissect the politics of immigration reform.
Yes, the candidate knew from his 2000 run for president how his garrulousness could charm. But he didn't score points merely by filling reporters' notebooks and by feeding their egos. He won them over because he truly had convinced them (with some exceptions) that he was a thoughtful man, a man of substance.
On a swing last week from Pennsylvania to Florida and North Carolina, McCain read his stump speech from a teleprompter. He attacked his opponent, Barack Obama, accusing the Democratic nominee of misleading the public and dragging the nation toward socialism. He seldom ad-libbed.
The reporters who had been crammed into the back of McCain's plane would hurry to the tarmac to catch glimpses of the Republican as he moved to and from his motorcade. But with only one brief news conference in more than two months, they were long past expecting McCain to pause for questions.
