Journalists and John McCain: Is The Honeymoon Really Over?

Alter, who professes "great personal respect" for McCain, says the key factor is not the war but McCain's shifting positions on, for instance, President Bush's tax cuts, which he opposed in 2001 but now wants to make permanent. In McCain's first White House campaign, Alter says in an interview, "the standard he set was not that of a liberal Republican, it was that of a straight talker. And suddenly he's not talking so straight."

A noticeable lack of journalistic excitement on the trip just commencing could be traced to the small crowds and the fact that McCain has informally announced once or twice before -- compounded by aggravation over the campaign's abject failure to provide lunch.

The challenge, says Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman, "is being fair to the guy. I don't want to beat him to death with all his campaign's problems . . . didn't raise enough money, reshuffled some staff, only talks about the war. That's the nature of campaigns, and you can still live to see another day."

Besides, appearances can be misleading. "When you see him on TV, he looks grim and dark," Zuckman says. "But when you sit with him on the bus, he's just as funny as ever. He just wants to shoot the breeze."

McCain strategist Steve Schmidt says that "the coverage is different to the degree that eight years after the 2000 campaign, we're a nation at war, he has a principled position he believes in deeply, and some people covering the race may not share it." But Schmidt says "the media universe is no longer one-dimensional" and that McCain has been using conservative blogs and radio shows to respond to criticism.

On an hour-long bus ride to Concord, McCain declared it "a major tactical blunder" that there were limited seats for reporters, and when asked why no senator has won the White House in nearly half a century, he said: "Knowing most of the Senate, I can understand that."

But he spent much of the time fielding serious questions on subjects from immigration to campaign finance reform. McCain declined invitations to grumble about his coverage, saying that for politicians to complain that "the media's against me" is "kind of a convenient excuse. Ninety-nine percent of the press corps reports what they observe in as objective a manner as possible."

But the tenor of the questions was revealing, as reporters kept asking McCain why he didn't seem the supercharged candidate of yore and whether his age, and second-time status, might be a factor. The senator insisted things are going fine.

As the lines of inquiry were exhausted, McCain allowed that he is superstitious (he won't pick up pennies if they're tails side up) and traced that to his days as a fighter pilot.

Journalists regularly treat candidates who have slipped in polling and fundraising -- McCain trails GOP rivals Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani on the money front -- as losers. "You can't be the fresh new thing twice," says Politico columnist Roger Simon, who sees McCain these days as "a less enthusiastic, gloomier candidate."

In 1999 and 2000, when McCain was an underdog challenging his party on campaign finance reform and denouncing some religious-right leaders, the press cast him in the role of rebel. This time, news accounts are more likely to highlight that he has mended fences with Jerry Falwell and is stressing his opposition to abortion.

To be sure, no one can accuse McCain of pandering, with his outspoken backing of an unpopular war that he readily admits may sink his candidacy. But the press gives him little credit for that stance, instead stressing that the war has cost him his front-runner status.