REENVILLE, S.C. - It's almost time to say goodbye to the bus.
When the presidential campaign shifts to multistate warfare next week, Senator John McCain will be forced to leave the warm cocoon of his customized tour bus that helped carry him from relative obscurity to national fame.
The new schedule will demand jet charters for cross-country travel, and though McCain's staff hopes to preserve some of the intimate atmosphere of the bus, there is a fear that some of the informal je ne sais quoi that the candidate created during his long hours aboard it will be lost.
''I hate to think about it'' McCain said when asked about the need for security as his campaign intensifies. ''It changes your life. I shudder at the prospect.''
While Texas Governor George W. Bush is protected by Texas Rangers, not a single security officer stands between McCain and the crowds. The Arizona senator has also served as his own spokesman since his campaign began months ago, conducting free-wheeling talkathons with dozens of reporters in the back of his bus.
''We're not going to abandon the bus,'' said Mike Murphy, a McCain adviser. After leaving South Carolina following tomorrow's primary, the candidate will barnstorm through Michigan by bus for two days before the Michigan primary on Tuesday. McCain will then switch to planes, but Murphy said the senator will continue to hold frequent sessions with reporters in midair and will revert to bus trips, when possible, in California and in New York before the wave of primaries there and elsewhere on March 7.
But the days of the McCain parade, rolling relentlessly through the back roads of New Hampshire and the highways of South Carolina, are nearly over.
Although McCain calls the caravan the Straight Talk Express, it has more closely resembled a Magical Mystery Tour.
In a scene crawling with dozens of TV camera crews, hundreds of writers and commentators, and a photo corps, the McCain bus became a throwback to the days when President Eisenhower conducted daily press conferences in the Oval Office with the cluster of reporters assigned to the White House.
The candidate has compared his bus performances to a high-wire act. By making himself available, on the record, for nonstop questioning, McCain has occasionally blundered. He had to issue clarifications regarding his position on abortion and the Confederate battle flag that flies over the South Carolina Capitol building. Usually, however, he has succeeded in making his points and in beguiling the press.
Though he invariably introduces the press as ''Trotskyites and communists'' at each campaign event and invites the audience to discuss with them ''the liberal bias of the media,'' the candidate who calls himself ''a proud Republican conservative'' has established a unique relationship with the men and women who cover him.
Last Saturday, a New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, pondered McCain's rise. ''Is this because of the media's infatuation with him,'' Rich asked, ''a love affair so outrageously sugary it threatens to toss the entire nation into insulin shock?''
In fact, the McCain bus sessions have the feel of a dormitory bull session, complete with coffee and doughnuts, in which the upperclassman holds forth on a variety of subjects.
In a round of seemingly interminable trips this week, the candidate talked for hours. With little prodding, he explained his position on Kosovo and his opposition to subsidies for ethanol, the fuel product made from corn. He covered the nuances of gun control and the nuisance of the big-money interests in politics.
When he saw that his face, which appeared on the covers of all the newsmagazines last week, had been replaced this week by Time magazine with the image of teen idol Leonardo DiCaprio, he delivered a mock gurgle. ''Aaargh,'' McCain howled. ''Androgynous Leo! I thought he was washed up. I thought he was finished.''
But McCain also flashed a less humorous side - his temper. When Cynthia Tucker, of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prefaced a question by calling McCain ''ultraconservative,'' he rejected the description vigorously. ''Ultra has the connotation of an extreme voting record,'' he shot back. ''It's an insult to the people of Arizona to say I'm ultra anything.''
Then another Atlanta journalist, Bill Nigut of WSB-TV, brought up the name of Georgia's Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, in a discussion of school vouchers. ''You're not doing very well,'' McCain said as Nigut's face flushed. ''Whether Governor Barnes is for vouchers is irrelevant to a national election.''
McCain's staff suddenly summoned the candidate to the front of the bus to respond to a nonexistent telephone call. They took him out of the presence of the reporters, an aide later acknowledged, to cool off McCain for a couple of minutes.
Yet during the same session, McCain made an interesting confession in response to a question about the Republican Party's relationship with American people of color. McCain noted that he had strong support from Hispanics and American Indians in his state, but added, ''I'm not particularly proud of my record with African-Americans, mainly because I'm a senator from a state where the African-American population is small.''
He criticized his own party on this score. ''I believe the Republican Party ... has unintentionally alienated large numbers of Hispanics.'' Ballot initiatives instigated by Republicans against immigration in California have ''exacerbated'' the situation, he said. ''The reality is that in California, with 32 million people, the alienation among the Hispanic community should disturb any Republican.''
Over the campaign, McCain has discovered that outspoken comments, delivered in the setting of a moving bus, have helped turn him into a champion of disaffected Republicans and independent voters.
His staff also recognizes the importance of the bus. ''We're going to keep it,'' Murphy said. ''It's just that it'll have wings instead of wheels.''
