McCain's America Looks Like N.H., Only Bigger

Sen. John McCain is applying his primary-season strategy of town hall meetings to the nationwide race. At a forum in Round Rock, Tex., he was joined by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. (By Harry Cabluck -- Associated Press)

"This is the reason we have town hall meetings," McCain said. The refuge "is a pristine place," he continued. "I don't think it would be productive. . . . I worry about ruining one of the most pristine places in the country. That's just my opinion. Thank you for your question."

On Wednesday, McCain fielded questions from a few of the 400 voters who showed up in Tyler and then hopped a short flight to San Antonio for a town hall event at a large insurance company that caters to the military and veterans. On Thursday, he answered questions from students at Rice University in Houston, and it was at a town hall meeting Friday in Richardson, Tex., that he dropped the L-word.

They are all part of the senator's plan to craft a national image as the Republican nominee.

"What they are . . . trying to do is re-create the access and reinforce the image that he has that he speaks the truth and is authentic and not overly handled," said Terry Nelson, a veteran GOP strategist who ran McCain's campaign last year before leaving amid a financial crisis and staff shake-up. "If the campaign steps away from who he is, they'll be in trouble."

But that will not be easy. The demands of a national campaign mean that there won't always be time to gather up the reporters onto the back of a bus. And McCain will not have the luxury of returning to any state with the kind of frequency that he did during the New Hampshire primary.

Already, the Democratic Party is doing something that McCain's Republican rivals rarely did effectively: challenge his claims of being a straight-talking maverick who is not afraid to answer the hard questions.

The Democratic National Committee is recruiting "trackers" with hand-held video cameras to attend his town hall gatherings, recording his every word. The DNC is revamping its Web site to be an anti-McCain hub and churning out videos using McCain's own words on its "FlipperTV" Web site. They send out a daily "Mythbusters" e-mail and are prepping polling and focus groups to find new ways to target McCain's reputation.

"For too long, McCain has gotten a bit of a free pass on this," said DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney. "John McCain is no longer a maverick, and the Straight Talk Express has basically gone to the impound lot."

Finney conceded that McCain's town hall campaigns have proved successful. But she called his tendency to be frank about his differences with some voters "a campaign tactic" that Democrats will try to expose, particularly on the Iraq war and the economy.

"I recognize that's powerful," she said. "You pick a couple of places where you can triangulate against. But on two of the biggest issues facing our country -- Iraq and the economy -- there's no straight talk coming. It's more Bush talk."

No one knows the importance of the town hall meetings for McCain better than Nelson, who was at the helm last year as McCain tried to run a bloated, national campaign. That effort nearly failed as donors abandoned McCain and longtime supporters started questioning whether he had lost his famed maverick spirit.

It was not until McCain parked himself in New Hampshire again, eventually holding 101 town hall meetings and traveling with a small group of aides, that his campaign began to recover.