McCain Makes Seven-State Swing In Bid for a Come-From-Behind Win

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McCain Finishes Seven-State Swing in Arizona

Sen. John McCain closed out the last full day of his more-than-10-year quest for the presidency on Monday after eight rallies in seven states, with a midnight gathering in Prescott, Ariz.

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McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, drew huge crowds in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada before flying overnight to her home state, where she plans to vote before heading to Arizona for an election-night party.

"The rousing speeches of our opponent can fill a stadium, but they cannot keep our country safe," Palin said in Missouri on Monday morning. "And for a season, a man may inspire with his words, but it's been for a lifetime that John McCain has inspired with his trustworthy and heroic deeds."

McCain's rallies were largely aimed at generating media coverage. The campaign decided to hold events in Colorado and New Mexico on Election Day to match Obama, who will campaign in Indiana.

"We're short on sleep but pretty jazzed about the rally [in Miami] last night, 15,000 people at 1 o'clock in the morning," Salter said, adding that when it comes to Obama, "we've got a good shot of catching the guy at the end."

McCain's top aides said they continue to see momentum headed in their direction, with the only question being whether the election will come too soon for them to take advantage of it. Campaign manager Rick Davis joked on the plane Sunday night that the campaign was careful to make sure McCain did not "peak too soon," but he added: "The question is, did he peak at the right time?"

Davis demonstrated little interest in considering what the campaign may have done wrong, dismissing the idea that McCain's decision to suspend his operation as the stock market began to drop hurt the GOP standard-bearer. "I think he did the right thing," he told reporters, adding that Obama managed to avoid being damaged by the crisis only because "he shut up and let the entire thing play out."

And while journalists have bemoaned McCain's lack of accessibility in recent months, Davis described it as an asset, saying the campaign encountered its greatest problems "when we were doing interviews with you guys." Asked why Palin had not held the pre-Election Day news conference McCain aides had said she would, Davis replied that it was never the campaign's intention. "News to me," he said. "No one talked to me about it."

As McCain now devotes the bulk of his time talking about taxes and other traditional Republican issues, he is running a very different campaign from the one he began in 2007. But Davis did not dwell on the shift as he spoke to reporters, saying his candidate is merely reflecting voters' priorities.

"The issues we're talking about are the issues Americans care about," he said. "If the American people wanted to talk about climate change, that would be a bigger issue."

In an interview broadcast on ESPN's "Monday Night Football," McCain vowed "significant action" to prevent the spread of steroid use among athletes and said the most important lesson he had learned from sports was "do the honorable thing, even when nobody's looking, because maybe nobody will know, but you'll know."

But most of the day was spent trying to fire up his staunchest supporters.

At Pittsburgh's airport in Moon Township, Pa., McCain charged that Obama will hurt the coal industry, drawing on recent comments by the Democratic nominee. In Tennessee, he joked that "Sarah Palin and Tina Fey were separated at birth," a reference to the uncanny resemblance between his running mate and the former "Saturday Night Live" comedian who has been portraying the candidate.