McCain's Happier State

To encourage that reconsideration, the McCain campaign surrounded the candidate with people who symbolically reinforced the message that McCain is a mainstream, Reagan-era Republican.

He came to Columbia flanked by two icons of the conservative movement -- Tom Coburn, the physician-senator from Oklahoma, and Jack Kemp, the former congressman from New York.

Coburn is a hero to two types of Republicans -- those for whom abortion is an abomination and those who view wasteful federal spending as almost as serious a moral failing. He has built an uncompromising reputation on both subjects. When Coburn testifies that he regards McCain not just as an ally but as a model, it challenges the notion that McCain is an unreliable maverick.

As for Kemp, no one has a longer history of championing supply-side economics, with its persistent belief that lower tax rates spur economic growth, than the old quarterback and onetime secretary of housing and urban development.

McCain is better known for fighting earmarks and other forms of "nonessential" spending, and he famously opposed Bush's first round of tax cuts because they did not call for similar spending reductions. But Kemp told the voters here that McCain wants an overhaul of the whole tax system, "and I will work with him" -- adding to reporters that he also admires the senator's insistence on a "humane" approach to the issue of immigration.

Basking in their praise, McCain could hardly believe all this was happening to him in South Carolina. Whatever the result, this campaign was very different.

davidbroder@washpost.com