An early Reagan fan, Schmidt, far left, earned McCain's trust after his campaign imploded in the summer of 2007. Co-author of five of McCain's books, Salter, near left, started with McCain as a speechwriter and became one of his closest friends.
At about this point in a presidential campaign, the candidates' top advisers are often reduced to cartoons, their personalities melted into caricatures, their humanity sharpened into daggers aimed at the other guy. Take Steve Schmidt, John McCain's latest political guru--a big, bald, barrel-chested stack of a man nicknamed "the Bullet" for his shiny scalp and steely focus. He's been painted as a bruiser who single-handedly trained McCain in the ruthless ways of general-election politics, in which the press is an adversary and any candor is punished. He's the one who always said Barack Obama was a bundle of hype, easier to...
