Team Forms New Plan for New Fight

Looking to November, Campaign of Presumed GOP Nominee Shifts Focus and Message

Five top aides to Sen. John McCain hunkered down for two days of meetings at the senator's rustic cabin south of Flagstaff, Ariz., over the weekend as they began to plot his transformation from primary-season candidate to Republican nominee.

As they ate barbecue with McCain and his wife, Cindy, the campaign's inner circle debated the dynamics of a race against either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama, the funding necessary for victory, the political climate likely to exist six months from now, and the shape of the organization they will need to quickly assemble.

Plans call for a bigger staff, outreach to more potential donors, offices in battleground states and a revised campaign message that challenges the Democratic vision for change in Washington. Former president George H.W. Bush endorsed McCain yesterday morning, giving his campaign the seal of the first family of the Republican Party and signaling that the transition discussed in Sedona has already begun.

"The McCain campaign recognizes the inevitability of John McCain's nomination," said one of the five, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. "He'll be facing either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in a race that doesn't appear it's going to be settled anytime soon. Obviously, the conversation focused on the dynamics of the race against either one of them."

The elder Bush praised McCain yesterday, calling him the right person to unite Republicans and adding: "No one is better prepared to lead our nation in these trying times than Senator John McCain." But after decades in which the senator from Arizona has been more agitator than leader within the Republican Party, aides say he must find a way to live up to his reputation for independence while learning to serve as the GOP's face and chief spokesman.

"We are mindful of lessons learned" when the campaign tried last year to build a massive infrastructure fusing McCain loyalists with Bush insiders, said a top adviser who talked about the general election on the condition of anonymity. Those moves led to a midsummer campaign collapse. "I do not think you should expect we will go on a hiring binge and have a huge, wildly overstaffed campaign. You will need to create a structure that has flexibility."

McCain's strategists -- including campaign manager Rick Davis, media guru Mark McKinnon, and advisers Mark Salter, Steve Schmidt and Charlie Black -- will form the nucleus of McCain's general election campaign. But the team will have to grow to include some of the senator's rivals and critics -- of whom there are many on Capitol Hill.

"The balance of power in Washington can change very quickly," said Todd Harris, a GOP strategist who worked on McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. "We are witnessing that change now. A lot of people within the party are starting to say, 'Well, he's our maverick now.' "

For the moment, McCain is still running against former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who has vowed to stay in the race until McCain has the 1,191 delegates necessary to guarantee the party nomination. He has 903 delegates after adding 50 to his total from Michigan and Louisiana, according to a tally by the Associated Press. If all of former candidate Mitt Romney's delegates back McCain, he will be just a few short of the nomination. The reality that the race will go on is slowing his pivot toward the general election and a matchup with either Obama or Clinton. But his message has already begun to evolve.

At a stop in Wisconsin on Friday, McCain's new focus was evident as he repeatedly took aim at Obama and Clinton. He predicted that the country will hear a meaningful debate between himself and whoever becomes the Democratic nominee in the fall.

"It will be whether we want higher taxes or lower taxes, it will be whether we want bigger government or less government, it will be whether you want government running the health-care system in America or we want families to make the choices," McCain told supporters at a rally in Oshkosh.

That continued a dramatic change in tone and content that began the day he won the Potomac Primary last Tuesday. In his victory speech, McCain mocked Obama's repeated use of the word "hope," calling it a platitude. And he assailed the Democratic promises of "change."