John McCain parties like it's 1999.

John McCain is feeling nostalgic. It is a frigid morning in early December, and his campaign bus--once again christened the Straight Talk Express- -is barreling through the New Hampshire countryside en route to yet another town hall meeting. As he sits in his cabin in the back of the bus, holding court for the small press contingent traveling with him, he begins thinking back to this time eight years ago."You've got to remember," McCain says, raising his voice to be heard over the din of the engine, "it was by no means clear [in 2000] that we were going to win New Hampshire a month out." Of course, in that month, McCain caught fire. Likening himself to "Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death Star," he waged an insurgent campaign against the GOP establishment and its anointed candidate, George W. Bush--scoring a landslide upset in New Hampshire, only to have the empire strike back in South Carolina and effectively bring his presidential bid to an end. Eight years later, McCain naturally doesn't want to talk about the 2000 campaign's depressing denouement, choosing instead to focus on its thrilling beginning--and, more to the point, how those heady days in 2000 bear an increasing resemblance to what he says he's seeing now, just a little more than a month before the January 8 primary that is shaping up to be his last stand. This, in and of itself, is something that would have once been inconceivable. A year ago, it would have been inconceivable because the then-front-running McCain was supposed to have already sewn up the nomination by this point. And, six months ago, when McCain's campaign organization imploded and much of his senior staff either quit or was fired, it seemed inconceivable that he would still be on the trail come December, let alone competitive in New Hampshire. Yet, with the GOP race still in a remarkable state of flux, McCain, partly by dint of hanging around, now stands a chance of winning the state. He has secured the endorsement of its largest newspaper, the Union-Leader, and climbed to second place in statewide polls. And, while he still trails Mitt Romney by double digits in most of those polls, the front-runner is now in danger of losing Iowa--which would weaken him going into New Hampshire. Although his political resurrection is still unlikely, McCain is enjoying himself. "We've started to sense some of what was going on back in '99," he says. "The audience, the turnout at the town hall meetings. ... You can just sense the uptick in excitement." For McCain--whose campaign at this point may be less about winning the presidency than about reclaiming some of the dignity he earned the last time he ran--that alone is a victory of sorts. While McCain undoubtedly would have preferred for the 2008 campaign to have gone differently, the front-runner mantle was never a good fit. Although his reputation as a maverick can certainly be overdone, when it comes to campaigning, he truly is one--with the near-constant access he affords both the press and voters. "The way he does things entails risks," says longtime aide Mark Salter. "Front-runners are usually about protecting the ball. He's not." Today, McCain's campaign is a barebones affair. It stays in budget hotels and doesn't bother with elaborate advance work at events. Most of the campaign's remaining senior staffers, including Salter, are foregoing salaries. Even the 2008 version of the Straight Talk Express is reputed to be shabbier than the one from eight years ago. But all this has merely freed the candidate to run the sort of improvisational and highly personal campaign at which he excels. More than any other politician, McCain seems to draw voters who are seeking some sort of emotional comfort. And, by turning his events into freewheeling sessions, he inevitably hears from them--whether it's the mother of a solider slain in Iraq who wants McCain to wear a memorial bracelet or the wife of a veteran who wants McCain's counsel about how to keep her family together now that her husband is having trouble finding work. At a climate change forum in Portsmouth, one man who had been severely disabled in a motorcycle accident some 20 years ago shocks the audience, not to mention the candidate, by essentially asking whether McCain thinks he should commit suicide. "All I can tell you," McCain responds, "is that I know that loving family members, loving neighbors and friends want to do everything we can to help you live as long and as beautiful a life as possible. And we pray for you. And we cherish you. God bless you." But, while McCain offers plenty of psychological comfort on the stump, he still provokes political discomfort--sometimes going out of his way to do so. At a Rotary Club meeting in Portsmouth, a businesswoman asks McCain what he would do to reverse the rise in gasoline and heating oil prices before going on to make a tangential observation about how commodities traders, and not opec, control those prices. But McCain can't let the aside go. Rather than reassuring the woman that he'd tackle high energy prices, he replies, "First of all, with respect, I do not accept your thesis. I think opec still controls the [prices]. " When the woman starts to protest, he cuts her off: "You can send me your facts, and I'll send you my facts." It was this blunt style that made McCain an overnight star here in 2000. But now McCain's refusal to pander is hurting him badly on two issues: immigration and the Bush administration. At a town hall in Raymond, an agitated man complains to McCain--who has taken a softer line on immigration than his GOP rivals--about "these illegal Mexicans" supposedly getting Social Security money and free health care. When McCain tries to appeal to his compassionate side-- noting that illegal immigrants "are God's children" and that "there are people who die in the desert"--the man shouts, "They take the risk!" "Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it," McCain replies in a resigned tone as the man storms out of the meeting. "And I understand why you wouldn't support me." But, if McCain isn't conservative enough on immigration for Republicans, he's not independent enough from the Bush administration for independents. In 2000, New Hampshire independents-- who make up about 45 percent of the state's electorate and are permitted to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary--overwhelmingly went for McCain. But, this time around, polls show them favoring Barack Obama. And a big reason seems to be McCain's refusal to go after Bush the way he did in 2000. At the Portsmouth Rotary Club meeting, an independent voter named Larry Gray asks McCain about how he'd choose a vice president. The question is really just a thinly veiled invitation to attack Dick Cheney, but McCain doesn't bite, filibustering with a joke about how the veep's two jobs are "to break a tie vote in the Senate ... and to inquire daily about the health of the president." Afterward, Gray is disappointed. "I think favorably of him," he tells me. "But I'm disappointed he didn't say something negative about Cheney." McCain and his aides insist that he can win not only New Hampshire but also the nomination. A victory here, they predict, would lead to an influx of Internet cash that would instantly solve McCain's money woes. "In 2000, we raised one million online overnight--in 2000," Salter says. And McCain claims that this cycle's compressed primary calendar would help him in South Carolina, which comes just 11 days after New Hampshire. "A lot of people allege that, if you'd have had this amount of time between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries [in 2000], I would be president of the United States today," McCain says. "Because it wasn't until the last few days that the machine in South Carolina kicked in and then-Governor Bush overtook us." It's impossible to know whether McCain and his aides really believe these arguments. But it's easy to recognize how grateful they are for the opportunity to make them. And that, it seems, is the real meaning of what McCain's supporters now call his "New Hampshire surge": that it has given him one last chance to do something he so obviously loves. Sitting by a fire late one night at Bedford's Wayfarer Inn and gossiping with his former campaign strategist Mike Murphy; taking constant phone calls from his friend Lindsey Graham, who's urging him to go on the air with ads in South Carolina; repeating the same corny jokes he told on the stump in 2000; saluting the legions of veterans who flock to his events--McCain, like his boyhood hero Ted Williams hitting a home run in his final career at-bat during an otherwise meaningless late-season game, is getting one more chance to recapture some of his past glories. And if he were to actually win New Hampshire? It's unlikely it would propel him to the nomination; but it would undoubtedly cushion the blow of his seemingly inevitable defeat. And, if politics owes John McCain anything, it may just be that.