In the second week of July 2007, a pall settled over the half-empty headquarters of John McCain in an Arlington, Va., skyscraper. The campaign was nearly broke. The top two officials had resigned. Two-thirds of the staff had been fired or had left, and those who remained worried that the campaign might never recover.
With headlines predicting the end, a small band of loyalists coalesced around McCain.
The new campaign manager, Rick Davis, was on the phone with donors in every state, asking them to hang on. Mark Salter, McCain's aide of nearly two decades, walked from desk to desk, persuading core staff members not to bolt.
Strategist Charles Black, McCain's longtime friend and a veteran of every Republican presidential campaign since Ronald Reagan's 1976 bid, dropped in to remind the staff that Reagan had survived a similar implosion.
For more information see today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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