"My party has gone astray," John McCain says, busily signing books at Warwick's, a bookshop in La Jolla, California, late last year. Hundreds of people are lined up around the block to get a glimpse of the GOP's in-house reformer. He is hawking his fourth best-seller, Character Is Destiny, an anecdote-rich guide to idealism for young readers, and the senator teases the store clerk about books that aren't in proper piles, that he's going to have to put the kid on a watch list. He's exhibiting the same on-the-trail crackle that made him such a barnstorming force through New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan in 2000. And when it comes to his dismay about the Republican party, McCain's whispery rasp builds in enthusiasm: "I don't want to leave it. I want to bring it back."
The Arizona senator is jacked-up on lemon squares, as former middies, surfer dudes, and stroller-pushing family guys file past, all with the same plea: Please run. We need you badly. On the back walls of the store are pictures of other book-selling politicians whose appearances at Warwick's boosted name recognition for a possible White House bid: Rudy Giuliani, Barbara Boxer, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. Months before the rest of America begins to focus on all the campaigns leading up to the next presidential election, this is the season of the proto-primary, a less-formal series of silent-whistle stops, attended by only the truly devoted.
McCain barely interrupts the banter to answer a quick call from Senator Lindsey Graham. There's a snag in a late-breaking deal with the White House over the so-called torture bill. But McCain puts the phone—and concerns—aside to grin and grip for each book-buyer's digital camera. He keeps things moving briskly; his every rushing move indicates the ticking clock, and the passing of time is evident all over his face. His dark eyebrows have whitened, and the scar on his left temple—the site of an excised melanoma—looks like a Ziploc seam. If he runs in 2008, he will turn 72 years old shortly before Election Day, an advanced but not unprecedented age. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he was elected in 1980; Bob Dole was 73 in 1996.
Since his failed White House bid in 2000, McCain has existed as a senator who is equal parts Arizona lawmaker and sagacious talking head. A 20-year veteran of the chamber, he operates skillfully among the 99 other senators in the rituals of deference and sabotage. Similarly, his relationship with the White House has been fraught but productive, with McCain backing President Bush's aims in Iraq yet still vigilantly probing the conduct of the war.
