Back in April of 2007, nearly a year ago, John McCain’s campaign was in trouble. The money wasn’t coming in, and, as Margaret posted on “The Caucus,” the New York Times Politics Blog on April 4, 2007: “McCain has certainly made a mess out of himself. He is for the war, insisting that there is progress…McCain is a complete loser. It may be good for the Democrats if he got the nomination. He is old. He has had cancer, which could recur. He is completely out of touch on where most Americans are on the war, and he is not conservative enough for the conservatives.”

Margaret was posting in response to Sarah Wheaton’s article, which noted that “the first sign of trouble was 3 weeks ago,” which would have been right about St. Patrick’s Day, 2007…in other words, right about now, one year ago.

Matters reached critical mass on July 10, 2007, when both McCain’s campaign manager (Terry Nelson) and his campaign chief strategist (John Weaver) quit. On the blog “Helium” contributors were writing, “Do layoffs among McCain’s campaign staff signal defeat for his 2008 presidential election?” Morrow Hall (on that blog), wrote, “McCain’s campaign has never gotten beyond taxiing around the tarmac, and the layoffs are just precursors to his imminent withdrawal from the race.”

Newsweek was writing articles about McCain’s “imminent implosion,” too. More than 12 more staffers quit McCain’s team after Nelson and Weaver left, when Rick Davis was placed in charge. There were defections in northern Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina…all key early states. His campaign was in debt at the end of the second quarter. Although McCain said he did not intend to quit, it was noted on “The Swamp,” the Tribune’s Washington Blog, “But it seems like few others around him have taken the same vow.”

Particularly bitter was the timing of the Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens defection, (due to money woes). They were veterans of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. According to an article posted (Tribune Washington Blog) July 25, 2007, “On Monday they e-mailed Rick Davis to say they were quitting…Now the loss of the Schriefer-Stuart media team is considered a new low blow….The McCain campaign had long planned to begin running ads this fall in early contest states; those plans are at risk, given Mr. McCain’s debt, compounded now by the difficulty of getting donors to invest in a troubled campaign.”

In a three-part series (Aug., 2006; Jan., 2008; April, 2008) Esquire magazine profiled the second coming of John McCain, now triumphant as the Republican party nominee for the Presidency. Chris Jones , in the latest April, 2008 installment describes …”the final transfiguration of McCain from perpetual outsider to the face of his party, the chosen one.” Only months before, McCain’s team was down to only four names; now there are 100 flying with him on his chartered JetBlue airplane.

When asked why he didn’t give up, McCain has said that he was spurred to continue his dying campaign when he attended a re-enlistment ceremony for almost 600 soldiers in Baghdad on the Fourth of July, which he attended with one of his staunchest political allies, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. McCain remembers talking with Lindsey, saying, “We’ve gotta’ stick with this. It was very moving to see those young people willing to fight like that.”

That’s one thing McCain (and his forebears) have always been willing to do: fight. When enrolled in a private boarding school, his nickname was “McNasty” because of his willingness to fight. His grandfather, a four-star Admiral, had been CINCPAC, which means, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, commander of all U.S. carriers in the Pacific during World War II.

His father (also a four-star Admiral) was CINCPAC for all U.S. forces in Vietnam. At least four McCain’s fought in the Civil War (Confederacy, Mississippi) and McCain, himself, flew an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft in the Vietnam War, where he was famously shot down while on his 23^rd mission to attack a Hanoi Power Plant, and captured by the North Vietnamese in October of 1967.

When captured, McCain had 3 broken bones, which healed badly, and he was tortured for four days until he signed a confession. He spent at least 2 of his 5 years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton in solitary confinement. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. While it is true that others who cooperated to a lesser extent than McCain did were prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, McCain, today, is hailed as a bona fide military hero, (even though he did graduate 894^th out of a United States Naval Academy class of 899.)

McCain’s two sons, John IV (Jack), born in 1986, and James “Jimmy”, born in 1988, are members, respectively of the Navy and the Marine Corps, with Iraq duty.

Some of the quotes from last summer seem impossible today, like this one from a Newsweek article by Michael Hirsh (“Why McCain’s Collapse Matters”) who said, “Presumably, Thompson will keep acting until he announces for President, which some politicos think will instantly make him the front-runner in a field that apparently no longer has room for John McCain.” Mary Dykeman, posting on “Helium” on July 10, 2007 wrote: “I don’t know who will be elected President in 2008, but I feel certain that it won’t be John McCain. His chances are disappearing with his funding.”

New Hampshire turned it around for McCain (just as dramatically as Florida did not, for Rudy). McCain did not campaign in Iowa, and didn’t even have a television presence in many states, after last-minute defection(s) in the ranks. He seems to have been most personally hurt by the defection of John Weaver, the man who combed his hair and brushed off his jacket on the campaign trail, (since McCain cannot raise his arms above his head due to his war injuries.)

“I have not talked to John in some time,” McCain said in January. Weaver has tried to reconcile, but McCain refuses to take his calls. In the April, 2008 current Esquire article (p. 154), Chris Jones describes McCain this way, “He’s superstitious, and he’s tenacious, and he’s stubborn, and he’s loyal, and he’s vindictive, and he’s combative, and he’s disciplined, except when he isn’t, and he’s right, except when he’s not, and now he would claim to have become one thing above all others, ignoring what he has been for so long in favor of what he will be.”

To turn it all around, McCain undertook a grueling campaign schedule that saw him stop in Chicago, Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. in a single day. He then did a New York to San Diego to Phoenix 17-hour finale. In New Hampshire, where he had upset George W. Bush before, he re-traced his exact route of 8 years earlier. A very superstitious man, he plucked at a lucky rubber band that he wears on his left wrist. On the last afternoon in New Hampshire on January 8^th he bet his entire candidacy on the results of New Hampshire’s voters, trusting that they would still believe in him.

Eight years earlier, the New Hampshire primary had signaled the start of John McCain’s rise. He went door-to-door, making up for George W. Bush’s money and staff by hitting 5 town hall meetings in a single day and bribing voters to come hear him with offers of free ice cream. He beat George W. Bush by 19 points, but South Carolina, where a “push poll” suggested that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock---a particularly dirty Rove campaign strategy employed against him----was his undoing. Now, it is John McCain’s time

Mark Salter, his new campaign chairman and speech writer, congratulated McCain, at 8:21 P.M., minutes after the polls closed in New Hampshire (with both the Associated Press and Fox News calling New Hampshire for the Old Warrior), shouting, “Unbelievable, dude! The greatest political comeback in my lifetime!”

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This post is guest-blogged by Connie Wilson.