ILMINGTON, Ohio - A week is a long time in politics, or so the cliche goes. For John McCain, this past week of reversals and missteps must have seemed an eternity.
Seven days ago, the Arizona senator's quest for the Republican nomination was hurtling along, despite a couple of close calls. McCain had lost South Carolina, but came back to win Michigan and his home state of Arizona. His chief rival, Texas Governor George W. Bush, had reportedly depleted all but a few million of his once-legendary campaign treasure.
And the McCain campaign's attempt to make the way Bush won in South Carolina his albatross - a symbol of what they called the narrowness of his vision for the Republican party - seemed to be sticking. Their greatest triumph came in Bush's letter of apology for his visit to Bob Jones University, whose leaders hold anti-Catholic views and where, until Friday, interracial dating was banned.
Sure, McCain was still behind - and substantially, in some states. But the clock was on his side. A whole week left, after all.
Yet the last seven days have unfolded so differently than McCain and his aides might have hoped. An air of resignation, by turns cheery, funereal, and acidic, has descended upon the candidate's scrappy campaign corps. They are snapping more photographs than usual these days, of each other.
The candidate has also provided some inadvertent symbolism. On Saturday, McCain recycled Senator Bob Dole's famous, 11th-hour plea when his 1996 campaign was running out of gas. ''Where's the outrage?''
Given Dole's fate, it was perhaps not the wisest rhetorical choice for the suddenly vulnerable McCain.
McCain and his aides are also taking more direct shots at Bush than usual, particularly over $2.5 million in advertisements criticizing McCain's environmental record, ads placed in crucial primary states by one of the Texas governor's strongest financial backers.
Burned in South Carolina for comparing Bush to President Clinton, McCain has also cast caution to the winds by invoking the specter of Clinton yesterday even more often than he raised the shining example of Ronald Reagan, which was often indeed.
McCain expressed his vehement conviction that the negative advertisements would backfire on Bush. He said the Bush campaign was getting ''more and more like the Clinton campaign. They'll say anything.''
''It's so Clintonesque, it's scary,'' he said later. ''Raise the soft money. Run the attack ads.''
But he also conceded that the ads may prove effective.
''It may work, I'm not saying it won't work,'' McCain said Saturday. ''But what do you win? Tell me what you win when you use that kind of campaign?''
Bush has publicly disavowed any connection to the advertisements, and on ''Face the Nation'' yesterday, he continually protested that he had no authority to ask businessman Sam Wyly, his friend and fund-raiser, to end them.
Meanwhile, McCain and his aides have consoled themselves with the idea that, even if Bush's tactics don't backfire now, they may hurt him if he is the nominee. Bitter talk of Bush as nominee is more common now, period.
''If it works, I can see the debate now'' between Bush and Vice President Al Gore, McCain said. ''You challenge Al Gore about the Buddhist temple'' fund-raising scandal ''and he fires back with, what did you do in South Carolina? What did you do in the New England primaries in the last four days? He's helpless.''
As to his own prospects, McCain was mostly guarded, especially compared to last week's bullishness on New York, New England and California where, even if winning delegates always seemed a distant prospect, he was confident of winning the popular vote.
''Here we are at Super Tuesday and we're competitive in all these states,'' he said. ''Two months ago, we were in single digits.''
McCain's speech Monday condemning Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, and television evangelist Jerry Falwell, was always a huge risk. It seemed to some at the time the master stroke of the campaign; it may prove a spectacular blunder.
By Tuesday, it was clear that McCain had pushed his successful Bob Jones strategy too far, or at least far enough for Bush to use it against him as effectively as McCain had used the governor's appearance at Bob Jones. Now it was McCain's turn to be accused of divisiveness, a charge that goes to the heart of the rationale for his candidacy as a Reagan Republican who can unite all kinds of voters. When McCain jokingly referred to Robertson and Falwell as ''forces of evil,'' even he had to admit he had gone too far, and was forced to apologize. By Wednesday, he had lost the support of South Carolina legislator Terry Haskins and former presidential candidate and Family Research Council head Gary Bauer. Tuesday night's loss in Washington, where McCain had expected to win, was a further blow.
All week he was constantly dogged about why he had not initially admitted responsibility for the Catholic Voter Alert calls made into Michigan before the primary there. The calls informed voters of Bush's Bob Jones visit, and of his failure to criticize the school's anti-Catholic stance.
Yesterday, Tim Russert host of NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' challenged McCain on it again. McCain's response was to suggest that the reporters didn't get the whole truth because they hadn't asked quite the right question.
Still, McCain continues to appear before mostly large, and always very enthusiastic, crowds. On Saturday night, he gave a moving speech at a Vietnam Memorial in Rochester, N.Y., before about 1,000 people. And a Cleveland High School gymnasium was jammed with more than 2,000 supporters yesterday afternoon, all of whom roared at his his well-worn one-liners and many of whom clamored for his autograph on their copies of his book.
Audiences cheered McCain loudest when he ventured into the territory which has caused him so much trouble this week. His references to Pat Robertson and Bob Jones University drew loud applause.
''Maybe that's the kind of politics they practice in Texas, but it's not the kind of politics we would accept in New York and Ohio and California,'' he said to a crowd in a hangar at Buffalo's airport. ''Go back! Go back with your dirty money!''
They loved it, but tracking polls suggest that McCain may be venting his outrage to a dwindling choir of converts. They show him slipping in almost all major contests tomorrow though he remains extremely strong in Massachusetts. He was headed for California last night, where he will stay until Wednesday.
But as McCain is fond of saying, much of the contest so far has been beyond prediction. ''No matter what happens on Tuesday,'' he said aboard his bus yesterday, ''There are going to be surprises.''
