John McCain has found a muse in Sarah Palin

The campaign's effort to present the Republican ticket as a team of mavericks ready to shake up Washington has loosened up McCain on the stump and banished the staid image of the dignified elder statesman.

He is a feistier candidate with Palin at his side. With his blue shirt sleeves rolled up, he punches out his lines with gusto, railing against the "old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd," stabbing the air with his Sharpie marker and thumping the lectern with his fist.

Aides acknowledge that Palin's presence has turned McCain into a sharper campaigner, and that is perhaps why she abandoned her plans to return to Alaska this weekend. Instead, she will accompany him for two more days than planned this week.

Cognizant of the splash their rallies have made on television, the campaign scrapped plans for a visit to a laboratory in Columbia, Mo., today, choosing instead to rally in Lee's Summit, Mo.

And McCain, who once struggled to match the ability of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, to draw large crowds, is now being flocked by throngs of supporters.

On the GOP ticket's first post-convention stop, supporters jammed the streets of Cedarburg, Wis. And in Sterling Heights, Mich., there were more than 7,000 people chanting -- not McCain's name, but "Sa-rah! Sa-rah!"

Much the same happened later that night in Albuquerque, where a crowd of 6,000 appeared. Dustin Spilsbury, whose 3-year-old daughter was hoisted on his shoulders, summed up his Sarah Palin fever as he watched her work the rope line.

"I'm ready for her for president -- I wish it was switched," said Spilsbury, a 30-year-old auto glass technician who lives with his wife, Shannon, and their two children in nearby Rio Rancho, N.M. "We love her. I just wasn't going to vote at all, [but] she sold us both."

"She does more things than we do -- the hunting and the fishing, the outdoors stuff, the kids and the bills. She understands us," he said.

Nearby, Kim Barnard, a pastor and 36-year-old mother of three, said choosing Palin "was the best thing [McCain] ever could have done."