Adam Nagourney
He recently began doing town-hall-style meetings with voters, including one with Ms. Palin on Wednesday night in Grand Rapids, Mich. But these are mostly by invitation only — reminiscent of Mr. Bush’s town-hall-style meetings of 2004 — as was made obvious by the succession of softball and adulatory questions floated across his plate.
For anyone who has covered Mr. McCain over the last decade, this new version of the candidate can be a striking sight. There the senator was the other day leading a crowd in a chant of "drill, baby, drill," the words that now invariably arise from his crowds when he talks about his support for offshore drilling, a position he once rejected.
There are the attacks against Wall Street — the denunciation of cheats and greed and self-dealing — which recall the decidedly populist cant of Al Gore when he was the Democratic nominee for president in 2000. Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama, of Illinois, for holding a celebrity-strewn, big-dollar fund-raiser in Hollywood despite the fact that he had just held his own celebrity-strewn, big-dollar fund-raiser in Hollywood.
There are the indignant attacks on corruption and self-dealing in Congress, the institution in which he has served for 25 years. "The word is going out, my friends — to the old-boy network, the pork-barrelers, the earmarkers — that change is coming," Mr. McCain said at stop after stop. "Change is coming! Two mavericks are coming to Washington, and we’re going to shake things up!"
For years, Mr. McCain has struck a different kind of cloth as a presidential candidate: as a politician capable of defying his party or embracing it; holding a world view that defied any easy ideological setting; having an ironic detachment as he observed himself on the campaign trail, combined with a sly sense of humor that leavened his occasional bursts of temper.
But these days, this Mr. McCain seems content carrying that burden himself.
For anyone who has covered Mr. McCain over the last decade, this new version of the candidate can be a striking sight. There the senator was the other day leading a crowd in a chant of "drill, baby, drill," the words that now invariably arise from his crowds when he talks about his support for offshore drilling, a position he once rejected.
There are the attacks against Wall Street — the denunciation of cheats and greed and self-dealing — which recall the decidedly populist cant of Al Gore when he was the Democratic nominee for president in 2000. Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama, of Illinois, for holding a celebrity-strewn, big-dollar fund-raiser in Hollywood despite the fact that he had just held his own celebrity-strewn, big-dollar fund-raiser in Hollywood.
There are the indignant attacks on corruption and self-dealing in Congress, the institution in which he has served for 25 years. "The word is going out, my friends — to the old-boy network, the pork-barrelers, the earmarkers — that change is coming," Mr. McCain said at stop after stop. "Change is coming! Two mavericks are coming to Washington, and we’re going to shake things up!"
For years, Mr. McCain has struck a different kind of cloth as a presidential candidate: as a politician capable of defying his party or embracing it; holding a world view that defied any easy ideological setting; having an ironic detachment as he observed himself on the campaign trail, combined with a sly sense of humor that leavened his occasional bursts of temper.
But these days, this Mr. McCain seems content carrying that burden himself.
