Here's NEWSWEEK's Holly Bailey with view from John
McCain's ranch in Sedona, Ariz. Try imagining Clinton or Obama sharing
the secrets of their rib dry-rub while dressed in a denim vest...
There are worse ways to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon than swinging
lazily back and forth on a tire swing strung up under a massive
sycamore tree in a quiet Arizona canyon, the sound of a gushing stream
nearby. Almost grazing the ground and hung on rope that looked to have
been tied and retied again over the years, the swing belonged to John McCain, who stood several dozen yards away, carefully monitoring giant slabs of pork ribs on a smoking grill.
It
was an idyllic scene, and one that might have made the Democratic
contenders envious. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fight it out
for their party's presidential nomination, campaigning well into the
night, McCain has been lying low. On Friday the all-but-certain
Republican presidential nominee took a break from the campaign trail in
Texas and flew to his weekend cabin outside Sedona, Ariz., about two
hours north of Phoenix.
On Saturday McCain hosted
his staff and several of his top supporters, including South Carolina
Sen. Lindsey Graham and former senator Phil Gramm of Texas, for a
so-called "thank you" barbecue on the eve of the primaries on Tuesday,
March 4—the day McCain is expected to lock up the delegates he needs to
officially win the GOP nomination. On Sunday afternoon McCain fired up
the grill again, inviting nearly 40 reporters to his spread in Page
Springs, about 15 minutes outside Sedona, for an on-the-record barbecue.
The
campaign booked the senator's aides and reporters into one of the only
big hotels in town: the Enchantment Resort, a five-star hotel nestled
so far back in the picturesque red rock canyons of Sedona that most in
the group found that their cell phones were out of range. To cope with
the stress of being incommunicado, people booked massages at the hotel
spa and went on hikes, including one on which an instructor sought to
help participants unblock their "inner chi." "Let me tell you, I've got
a lot of chi today," joked Steve Duprey, a close friend of McCain's
from New Hampshire who has been traveling with the campaign. Others
played golf, went swimming or simply explored the hotel compound. "I
haven't walked this much in eight months," one campaign regular
confessed. Perhaps this scene gives some insight into why McCain
jokingly refers to the media as his base.
McCain and
his aides had initially hoped to keep the soiree at his cabin off the
record, billing it as a strictly social gathering. But they reversed
course when some members of the press said they wouldn't be able to
come unless the senator was on the record. To compromise, they allowed
reporters to bring their notebooks but banned tape recorders.
Meanwhile, pictures for publication were not allowed. As a result,
several reporters could be seen furiously scribbling and typing notes
into their BlackBerrys throughout the afternoon, at times so intensely
that an observer might think McCain was divulging his deepest, darkest
secrets.
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