Peterborough, New Hampshire

Wearing the uniform of the young Republican male--navy sport coat, white oxford, khakis, and loafers--a flustered staffer for John McCain turned to a policeman standing at the back of the Peterborough Town Hall.

"What's the capacity of this place?"

"I have no idear," the cop responded.

The young man dashed off, still looking anxious.

He had reason to be nervous. It was 11:25 A.M. the Saturday before the New Hampshire primary, and the Peterborough Town Hall was full. McCain was not scheduled to arrive for another 50 minutes. The rapidly growing crowd of McCain supporters, many of them wearing duck boots and North Face outdoor gear, spilled onto the street and stood perched on snow drifts. They mixed with supporters of Dennis Kucinich (who had an event nearby) and Ron Paul (whose supporters were everywhere). Down the street, a corpulent Kucinich supporter, wearing a Flavor Flav-sized button featuring a sassy Dennis Kucinich headshot, chased would-be voters carrying a wooden stake with three Kucinich yard signs duct-taped together. ("Dude, how many drugs did you take this morning?" asked one man he accosted.)

The McCain crowd struck up a chant of "Mac is back" and waited for a glimpse of the 2008 version of the Straight Talk Express. It arrived--with another bus for press behind it--to wild cheering.

Once inside, McCain told the crowd that he was happy to be there, and he looked like he meant it. He was clearly energized by the size of the crowd. To his left, hanging onto the railing of a short stairway leading up to the stage, Fox News Channel's Bill Hemmer crouched next to former congressman Charlie Bass and congressman Chris Shays, craning his neck to get a better view of the candidate. Other big name journalists from big name media outlets had come to see McCain. There was Joe Klein from Time magazine and Jeff Greenfield from CBS and Dana Bash from CNN. In the back of the spacious hall is a set of risers with a large bank of cameras.

The speech was short, and McCain took more than a dozen questions from the audience. When he was finished, McCain shook hands on the way to the back of the room, where he was quickly engulfed by reporters, cameras, and microphones. McCain spoke just above a whisper and was very hard to hear unless you happened to occupy a spot directly in front of him. This complicated matters for journalists, now standing eight deep, trying to time their shouted questions to the end of his last answer. Reporters yelled over one another and the candidate. And all of this before his five-point win in New Hampshire last Tuesday.

Things were different back in early September. Few national media outlets were interested in McCain after an abysmal summer that left him with a depleted staff, very little money, and dwindling support in the polls. When I came to see him in New Hampshire a week before the "No Surrender Tour" that would help reinvigorate his campaign, there was no Straight Talk Express, just a plain white Ford Econoline van with two McCain bumper stickers. Instead of shouting questions to him from the back of a pack of national journalists, or even sitting with him in a group interview aboard the Straight Talk Express, as reporters do now, a campaign staffer casually asked me if I wanted to join McCain and his family for Thai food in Concord.

Thanks to one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent political history, John McCain is now back to exactly where he started this race and exactly where many people thought he would be from the beginning. He is the frontrunner.