The McCain Makeover

In many ways, he's still the same sly, sardonic and self-deprecatory candidate who charmed the press and a surprisingly large segment of the public in 2000, the quixotic reformer whom political columnist Joe Klein described as "a man on a white horse attempting to traverse a muddy field."

But he's more guarded, more deferential to Bush and all the president's men, more inclined to emphasize his old-fashioned conservative credentials and to downplay those progressive ones. There are fewer confessional moments and even fewer incendiary ones. The man who says his favorite president is the roughriding Theodore Roosevelt sounds more like another military man who became president, the cautious elder statesman Dwight Eisenhower.

Even so, McCain still revels in the spotlight and the sheer giddiness of public life. "The next day after 'The Daily Show,' I walked into the building and, I'm not exaggerating, 100 interns told me, 'I saw you on Jon Stewart!'

"You gotta walk the tightrope," he says. "Life's too short to do it any different."

HE BOUNDS UP THE STEPS of the small Beechjet 400A and pours himself into a leather seat. "This is gonna be a fun trip," he declares as the plane prepares to take off for the Michigan trip. He launches into an analysis of Michigan politics, sprinkled with conversational detours to South Africa in the 1980s, a new book he's reading on the Iraq war and the trials and tribulations of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

McCain turns 70 on Tuesday, and his thinning hair is snowy white. The angular baby face of his Vietnam-era photos is now a full moon with a smooth, doughy chin the color of Pillsbury flour. Two angry red scars plunge down the left side of his cheek in front of his ear, mementos of melanoma surgery in 2000. While they are striking, they seem to fit the biography and the aura. It's easy to imagine that they were inflicted by his North Vietnamese captors, not by a cancer surgeon.

His shoulders are stiff, and he takes aspirin for the pain. He boasts that he's been written up in orthopedic medical journals because his arms, broken when he ejected from his crippled fighter jet over Hanoi in 1967, were left to heal on their own without proper treatment, making him something of a medical phenomenon.

He leaves on his crisp blue blazer even in the privacy of the small plane, and he doesn't loosen his tie. Later, when it's finally time for the coat to come off, he turns to Weaver, who gently pulls the jacket from his shoulders. "Easy, Johnny," McCain hums softly. "Easy does it."

The schedule can be grueling, but Weaver tries to ensure that, except when McCain does the morning talk shows, the senator doesn't have to rise too early or stay up too late. Still, like any canny road warrior, McCain knows to catch a quick bite to eat or a few minutes' sleep whenever the opportunity arises. On this flight, he goes from full-bore conversation to a wispy snore within minutes, his eyes concealed behind a pair of opaque, wraparound Ray-Bans. But even when napping he doesn't seem to miss much.

So how long have you two been traveling together? I ask Weaver after McCain appears to have dozed off.

"Too long," a suddenly wide awake McCain interjects with a crooked grin. "Much too long."

WEAVER, 45, is a lanky, laconic campaign veteran who first joined McCain in 1998 after working for candidates in his native Texas. He says he loved the loose, improvised nature of the 2000 presidential run, yet always feared it was doomed. "Crusades are easier than structured campaigns," he says. "You have less responsibility and more freedom. But you always lose in the end."