Quotes of the Day

John McCain knows how to win small. No other candidate in memory has done it better. Give him a microphone, a chartered bus and some Purell, and he can take down a state with raw hustle and personality — a few corny jokes, some "straight talk" and his own heroic tale. When he wrapped up the G.O.P. nomination in March, his campaign employed just 90 people. It was a bit like the Bad News Bears winning the National League pennant.

But grit and luck get you only so far. Fall campaigns for President require massive organizations. What's more, McCain is likely to face the biggest, baddest team on the block. Barack Obama has been running the equivalent of a national campaign for almost six months now. He spends more than twice as much every 30 days as McCain has been able to raise in the same period. Obama has a campaign staff that numbers about 700 and already blankets most of the swing states. His organization ticks like a clock, has had an unwavering message and has kept a firmly fixed inner circle.

McCain, meanwhile, is still formulating his general-election pitch and struggling to build his core team. He is also trying, for the second time in as many years, to create a campaign that can win on a big scale. His previous attempt to run as the institutional candidate, with a projected nine-figure budget, failed spectacularly last July and nearly forced him out of the G.O.P. race. Though his campaign is leaner than his rival's, McCain says he is happy with the progress. "I am pleased with the way the campaign is going," he said just before Memorial Day weekend in an airplane hangar in California's Central Valley. "I think we are going pretty well." But even as he spoke, problems were sprouting all around him.

That afternoon, McCain was forced to announce he would "reject" the endorsements of two controversial Evangelical pastors, John Hagee of Texas and Rod Parsley of Ohio, whose support he had previously courted, defended and celebrated as keystones of his effort to woo his party's Christian-conservative base. The next day, his wife Cindy reversed a long-held pledge of her own and released the initial pages of her 2006 tax return to the public. A self-imposed ban on lobbyists has forced the departure of five of McCain's advisers, including former Representative Tom Loeffler, the campaign's national finance co-chairman, and holds the prospect that others will follow them out the door. Behind the scenes, the campaign seems to be searching for stability. In mid-May, McCain sought the counsel of former adviser Mike Murphy, who suggested, among other things, that McCain and his surrogates soften the tone of their attacks on Obama. To reassure fund raisers, the campaign also held a conference call making clear that everything was under control, despite Loeffler's departure.

Back in Washington, the anxiety level of Republicans is rising. "The McCain camp is now acting without much rhyme or reason," says a prominent consultant. "And it all goes to the top." Another Republican campaign strategist, in a thinly veiled reference to McCain, says, "Somebody is behaving impulsively is the point."

In ways large and small, candidates leave their marks on their campaigns, and that seems especially true of the Arizona Senator. In the past two years, McCain has witnessed more turmoil — and enjoyed more joyous rebirths — than most candidates see in a decade. With five months until Election Day and early polls suggesting it could prove to be another nail biter, McCain faces critical questions that could decide the election: Does he have the temperament to lead his party out of the wilderness of George W. Bush's late years? Will he be able to adapt his insurgent style to the pressures of a party establishment's campaign? And more precisely, can McCain win when the game gets big?

"An Immensely Difficult Time ..."
The stiffest challenge McCain's team faces is the nation's surly mood, which, if surveys are right, is only turning darker. From the giddy confines of the McCain campaign plane in late April, it was easy to imagine the Democratic Party bickering all the way to the August convention. Republicans were scratching their heads in disbelief at their good luck: McCain's approval ratings remained at near historic levels — at more than 60%, some 30 points ahead of the Republican Party brand's. "I think the way things are going, we could say that McCain won this election between March and June," adviser Mark McKinnon allowed at one point.

But then food and gasoline prices jumped, consumer confidence slumped further, and housing prices fell even more. Democrats showed signs that they would end their campaign without going into double overtime, and Bush reappeared onstage, stealing the spotlight by suggesting obliquely that as President, Obama might appease terrorists. The overall effect served as a stark reminder that in order to win, McCain must distance himself from Bush's legacy without abandoning the coalition that won the past two presidential elections. "One of the challenges is for me to reach across the political spectrum," he admits, "but also make sure we re-energize our base in this campaign."

It sounds easy in theory, but in practice it can produce a muddle. In the same breath in which McCain praises Bush's current strategy in Iraq, he condemns the Bush team for bungling the early fighting there. He extols the President's income-tax cuts, which he once opposed, and then criticizes Bush's failure to help the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. When the President traveled to Phoenix to raise money for McCain recently, McCain's handlers moved the event to a private home to minimize the chance for TV crews to capture the two men together. Privately, his advisers say they are confident that the candidate's reputation as his own man will overcome the Bush stain. But no one doubts it will be a challenge. Says Terry Nelson, who ran the McCain campaign until a staff shake-up last summer: "Frankly, anybody sitting at that table would have an immensely difficult time sorting through what is the winning message for the Republican nominee."

But not all of McCain's problems can be laid at the feet of the incumbent. His penchant for sometimes impulsive action has, in one high-profile case, backfired on his campaign. Reports surfaced in early May that two campaign aides had worked a few years earlier representing the military junta in Burma. When he read the news, he was furious and ordered up a strict new policy against lobbyists on his team. "McCain wasn't happy, and he acted quickly," says an associate of the Senator's. "He said, 'I want the strictest policy against lobbyists we can have, the strictest anybody's ever had.' And that was it."

Except it wasn't. McCain had been leaning on current and former lobbyists for months in part because he's never had a grassroots fund-raising operation akin to Obama's. As a result, he had to shoot down questions about all the special pleaders working for his campaign. "These people have honorable records," he said in February. "And they're honorable people." But his new policy, which was stricter than what some senior advisers favored, undid all that straight talk and prompted a weeklong purge inside the campaign. A number of lobbyists were tossed over the side overnight, generating resentment. Most won't be missed much, but some will: gone is Loeffler, a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, who played a central role in campaign fund raising and who functioned in effect as chief financial officer. As with others who departed, Loeffler's outside work was no secret inside the campaign. "The story was dead, and they resurrected it themselves," observes a Republican campaign strategist who, like others who spoke with TIME, declined to be interviewed on the record.

Others suggested that the lobbyist problem will make fund raising even harder and has slowed the efforts to scale McCain's lean, insurgent campaign to the size he and his party will need to win in the fall. Back in 2004, Bush built a massive top-down hierarchy that brought a corporate efficiency to politics. The McCain model, by contrast, has been designed to reflect McCain's insurgent personality. While the Bush campaign channeled all decision-making through its northern Virginia headquarters, the McCain campaign has established a decentralized network of 11 "regional campaign managers," who will separately direct much of the campaign in their parts of the country. The goal is to save money, but no one knows if it will work. Veterans of Bush's 2004 incumbent juggernaut say McCain is also far behind schedule in putting boots on the ground. But the more worrisome contrast may be with Obama, who has already spent millions on — and organized thousands of volunteers in — such swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

There are even doubts about whether McCain's unique press strategy — inviting reporters to cycle on and off his motor coach for face time and Q&As — will work in a general-election campaign. Insiders are worried that reporters have too many chances to throw him off his daily talking points. "That's not how you win an election!" says a McCain associate. "McCain is about the only person left who thinks we ought to keep the bus going. Obama keeps the press at a distance. Why? Because he's trying to win!"

For other candidates, such wounds might be mortal, but McCain has defied conventional wisdom and won in the past. His approval rating among independents and some Democrats remains strong, and he is tied with Obama in national surveys. A senior Republican adviser to one of McCain's former rivals appraised the situation this way: "Not raising money, still no excitement, can't seem to get his footing, the Bush brand is toxic, and yet it still looks like he can win," the adviser said. "All that is so John McCain."

— with reporting by James Carney/Washington

• Michael Scherer