The McCain campaign is trying to get serious—if only the candidate would grow up

This article is from the July/August issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.

You guys are way too easy on him." I hear that a lot when I tell people I've spent most of the presidential election covering John McCain. Most memorably, Ben Affleck spouted this criticism as he gestured with wife Jennifer Garner's purse in a hotel driveway after the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Perhaps Ben has a point.

In the past year, McCain has dropped his opposition to George Bush's tax cuts; he's embraced the Christian right; he's remained stubbornly supportive of the Iraq war. Yet we tend to cover him as though he doesn't really mean any of it. His missteps—confusing Sunnis and Shi'ites, making an impolitic musical joke about bombing Iran, or admitting with a wink that he doesn't know jack about economics—don't get the kind of red-siren gaffe-tastic coverage as those of other politicians. Why? Because McCain's constant, almost obsessive level of press access gives the media a depth of knowledge about him that makes playing "gotcha" feel, well, as trivial as it probably should in all cases. Also, the McCain show is a good deal more fun to watch than Gigli.

It's this latter point that doesn't get talked about as much: Covering McCain is a blast. He genuinely likes reporters: He'll joke with us about our drinking habits, playfully request our cell phones in the middle of a call and tell some unsuspecting editor or parent that the phone's owner has just been hauled off to rehab, and engage in gleefully sarcastic banter about both our colleagues and his. The campaign's atmosphere of hectic improvisation—its freewheeling "what-the-fuck-ness"—is entirely absent from the more disciplined outfits he's run against. With the nomination in hand and Secret Service personnel now on board, he has, it's true, lost some of that flavor of adventure. But even now, the campaign has found ways to circumvent the traditional narratives of a Republican nominee.

Like in April, when McCain started a tour that would take him to several of the poorest communities in America—places that, as a staffer put it, "Republicans won't go." I went along.