ast night, Senator John McCain of Arizona took a giant step in his long journey back to the fold. The former contender for the Republican presidential nomination delivered a convention speech supporting Governor George W. Bush of Texas that was as full of hope and faith in his former rival as the senator's campaign speeches were of fiery disapproval.
''If you believe patriotism is more than a sound bite, and public service should be more than a photo-op, then vote for Governor Bush,'' McCain said to loud applause. ''I support him. I am grateful to him. And I am proud of him.''
Some in that audience found it very hard to hear those words, particularly the delegates who had lost sleep and optimism and friends over the often bitter primary battle between the two Republicans, delegates who had carried in plastic McCain signs to wave as one last gesture of support. But McCain himself has long said this day would come if he failed to win the nomination. He always said he would support the nominee of his party.
And this despite the fact that McCain has long been considered a thorn in that party's side. During his primary campaign, and long before, he decried the current system of campaign financing, accusing both parties of being enslaved to special interests. That, combined with his sometimes irascible nature, did not endear him to many of his Republican colleagues.
But the issue of campaign finance reform, which has defined McCain for so long, and which earned this veteran Washington insider a reputation as a truth-telling maverick, was completely absent from last night's speech. And while they might not have liked it, even the most bitterly disappointed supporters had to concede that, in supporting a candidate he often said epitomized the worst of modern politics, the senator was taking the only path open to him.
But this speech was as much about the future as the past, as much about improving the senator's prospects as repairing breaches. He may long have acted as if he needed no one but voters, but McCain is in the business of making friends in higher places these days.
McCain's tributes to Bush were sprinkled throughout his speech on the theme of national security, in which the Arizona senator and former Vietnam POW urged Americans to think of themselves as guardians of the world. McCain adopted a dignified, almost subdued tone, with none of his trademark quips and almost no extra stress on applause lines.
McCain edged a little closer to his more provocative themes when he decried the ''cynicism'' that is ''suffocating the ideals of many Americans, especially among our young. And with cause, for they have lost pride in their government.'' he said.
But he did not name what he has always said is the prime cause of that cynicism: the corrupting influence of money. His rhetoric on the issue has always been so clearly directed at members of the GOP establishment that it would have spoiled last night's party and chipped away at the theme of unity, which has become this convention's organizing principle. And McCain has long known his political survival depends on his support for Bush.
''John McCain, whether he likes it or not in his deep soul, has an obligation to do and say all the right things,'' said Richard N. Bond, former Republican National Committee chief and a friend of the Arizona senator's. ''That's his nature and that's his job, to close ranks. It would be political suicide not to, and McCain knows it.''
He will campaign with Bush next week, and later in the year. He will even have the Texas governor and his wife, Laura, stay at his house near Sedona, Ariz. And he will campaign for close to 100 Republican congressional candidates.
McCain ventures reluctantly into discussions of his prospects should Bush lose November's election to Vice President Al Gore. When pushed, he deflects questions about that scenario by saying he thinks it would be hard to recapture the ''lightning in a bottle'' responsible for his success this time around.
He might be right. ''To manufacture that kind of excitement two cycles in a row is difficult,'' said Dean Spiliotes, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.
Ronald Reagan built a groundswell gradually over several election cycles before he became president, Spiliotes said, but McCain's candidacy was probably more like that of Reform Party candidate Ross Perot's than Reagan's. The former California governor gradually became central to his party, he said. McCain's appeal, like Perot's in 1992, lay in his opposition to that establishment. And, as Perot's much poorer showing in 1996 demonstrated, that kind of appeal can be fleeting.
But he will still be able to count on people like Bobbie Coffin of New Hampshire.
Coffin, who watched McCain from the convention floor last night, had never worked on anybody's political campaign before she mailed position papers and made cookies for McCain's.
She watched the first trickle of support grow into the giant wave that swept McCain to a 19-point win in her state. Coffin and her son were driving to McCain's victory party in Nashua when the news came over the radio that he'd opened a double-digit lead over Bush.
''It was wonderful,'' she recalled. ''I felt, `He's launched. He's on his way.' Nobody will forget that.''
But the pain of defeat in South Carolina, ''a viciously negative campaign,'' followed less than three weeks later. ''And the rest,'' Coffin said, ''was history.''
''We're all trying to accept it,'' she said sadly yesterday. ''We're trying to follow the senator's lead. Of course we're disappointed. You can't work like that for a candidate and not believe in him. I can't change horses that fast.''
But change horses she did. Like McCain, she is trying to be a good Republican. Though a handful of the other delegates, from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have been loath to give up their candidate, requiring last minute interventions by McCain aides to persuade them to cast their ballots for Bush, Coffin understood why she should follow McCain's wishes instead of her heart. She now sports a ''Straight Talkers for Bush'' pin.
''I really think he's in an impossible position,'' she said, of McCain. ''He can't act as others have acted, stamp his foot and leave the party.''
But that doesn't mean she has to like it.
''It's hard to put on a different hat,'' she said finally. ''I'm not going to pretend it isn't.''
