The F-Word

John McCain still refuses to use the F-word—front runner, that is. Boarding his campaign plane early Wednesday, the morning after his big win in Florida, the Arizona senator waved off reporters who asked if he was finally comfortable thinking of himself as the man to beat for the Republican presidential nomination. "I'm trying not to think that way," McCain said. "You know me, I'm way too superstitious for that … We've still got a long way to go."

McCain has good reason to be wary. Twelve months ago the Arizona senator entered the presidential race as the heir apparent to George W. Bush, a candidate with loads of cash, a boatload of big-name endorsements, and some of the best consultants in the business. But the bottom dropped out. In spite of efforts to make nice with key evangelicals like Jerry Falwell, McCain never quite won the trust of social conservatives—who view him as too squishy—or of the party's establishment, which viewed his combative relationship with the president and other Republicans as nothing short of a betrayal. He championed policies like immigration reform, which put him at odds with the GOP base, and the surge in Iraq, which hurt him with independents—the voting bloc that proved so pivotal in his 2000 campaign.

By the summer the buzz was gone. McCain was out of money and had lost more than half of his staff—including longtime friend and adviser John Weaver—and was written off by most of the Beltway chattering class. "It's effectively over," election expert Charlie Cook declared in July. "The physicians have left the hospital room, and it's the executor of the estate that's taking over."

But McCain didn't go away. The Arizona senator, who told NEWSWEEK over the summer that he was "never quite comfortable being the front runner, per se," ditched his fancy Straight Talk Express bus but stayed on the road. He bet his campaign on New Hampshire, closing offices and laying off staffers in other pivotal states, like South Carolina and Florida, to cut costs.

He lost one key supporter, former senator Fred Thompson, who had co-chaired McCain's 2000 campaign and was making calls on his behalf before deciding to run on his own. And other candidates shifted into the spotlight, most notably Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. Yet there remained no clear front runner. With the race for the nomination in flux, McCain worked the phones urging allies, like Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, not to count him out. "We're going to win this thing," he told Crist in early November. That assurance kept Crist from endorsing Giuliani—a move that may well have been pivotal in determining the results in Florida Tuesday night.

As McCain heads toward Super Tuesday, an epochal day on which more than 20 states will cast their ballots for president, it's almost as if 2007 never happened. The campaign is back where it started: with McCain as the man with the momentum, squaring off against Romney, a challenger who is willing to spend whatever it takes to win.