BOARD THE STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS - He may have fired up his trademark bus once again yesterday, but John S. McCain wants to make this very clear: He's not trying to steal anybody's thunder.
''We didn't intend this bus trip to be an extravaganza,'' a jovial McCain said as he sat in his usual red swivel seat in the back of his white bus, drinking soda after soda. On board were many of the staff members who had run the Arizona senator's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and some of the reporters who had covered his many town hall meetings in New Hampshire.
''What we were hoping was it would just be a good time, and that it would be reported as such,'' McCain said. ''We thought we'd have a trip where just the old timers came with us, but it just grew and grew and grew.''
McCain traveled from Arlington, Va., to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia with several busloads of reporters in tow. The convoy was bigger and a good deal more festive than it had been for most of McCain's unsuccessful primary campaign, and McCain was happy to have the company.
He appeared at a town hall meeting yesterday afternoon in Blue Bell, Pa., with state senator Stewart Greenleaf, a candidate for the US House. The crowd of several hundred gave McCain a loud ovation, and laughed heartily at his well-worn one-liners, like the one about Arizona being so dry the trees chase the dogs.
Aware that his trip, and his busy schedule in Philadelphia, had annoyed some aides of the soon-to-be GOP presidential nominee, George W. Bush, McCain was careful to give the Texas governor his due at every possible turn.
''I always said I'd support the nominee of the party,'' McCain said, ''Governor Bush is running the kind of campaign I would have run if I were the nominee.''
He praised Bush for appealing to a wider variety of voters now than during the primaries, and said the governor was running a far more ''centrist'' campaign, concentrating on issues like education and military reform.
McCain won seven primaries, including New Hampshire, Michigan, and Massachusetts. The battle in South Carolina, which the senator lost, was especially vicious, and McCain was clearly angry during and after it because of what he called the Bush campaign's negative tactics. But the Bush of South Carolina had not been the true Bush, McCain said yesterday, calling the tactics there ''the exception to the rule of the campaign he's run.''
In any case, McCain said, he would do himself no good by dwelling on his injuries now.
''Of course, I was unhappy about some of the things that happened during the campaign,'' McCain said. ''I don't know of a campaign that the loser isn't unhappy with some things.
''But the point is, you can't be a sore loser. Americans do not admire or appreciate a sore loser, so you just move forward and try to make the very best of it. I think I'm at step eight of the 12-step presidential recovery program.''
He described his relationship with Bush these days as ''cordial.''
The senator will deliver a prime-time address in support of the Texas governor on Tuesday night, and has a busy schedule of appearances throughout the convention, including a speech at the ''shadow convention,'' organized by commentator Arianna Huffington. McCain said that speech, too, would be an attempt not to compete with Bush, but to bolster him.
McCain will host a reception for his delegates today to thank them for their work, and to urge them to put aside their anger and throw themselves behind Bush. McCain will campaign with the governor out West for three days after the convention, and have Bush and his wife, Laura, visit his ranch near Sedona, Ariz.
McCain stepped gingerly yesterday into the subject of his own future ambitions. He said he fully expected Bush to win in November, and probably would be elected to a second term. His strongest supporters are counting on the senator's running in 2004 if Bush loses to Gore. And this week's high-profile appearances may be a kind of testing of the waters.
McCain tried to avoid the subject yesterday, but when pushed to talk about what he might do if Bush lost, McCain said he wasn't sure whether another run at the presidency was even possible.
''The thing you have to figure is, could we catch that lightning in a bottle again?'' he said. ''Could the circumstances that prevailed last time happen again? The kind of unconventional campaign we ran, could that work?''
He was nostalgic about his campaign. ''It was the greatest experience of my life,'' McCain said. ''I can't tell you how grateful I am for having had this experience.''
The old fire returned, however, when a reporter asked McCain if he had gotten Bush's permission for his pre-convention odyssey.
''Last time I checked,'' he bristled, ''I'm a US senator elected by the people of Arizona.''
