A lighter end to a grueling two years

Somewhere in a corner of northeastern Ohio, just five days before the presidential election, John McCain sat in the back of his campaign bus telling his favorite Henny Youngman jokes.

Somewhere in a corner of northeastern Ohio, just five days before the presidential election, John McCain sat in the back of his campaign bus telling his favorite Henny Youngman jokes. No one laughed harder than he did. No one is suggesting that McCain is ecstatic that he is behind in the polls or that the cognoscenti, as he puts it, “have written us off.”

But in the frantic last days of his nearly two-year second quest for the presidency, McCain has liberated himself from the irritable, edgy candidate of a month ago. He has, by all appearances, decided he will get to Tuesday by having a good time. “If we were 10 points up, we’d all be a little bit happier,” said Mark Salter, one of McCain’s closest aides. “But you throw a lot of stuff at the guy, and he fights all the harder.”

McCain’s days begin earlier than they used to for morning television and radio interviews that he races through in 5- and 10- minute bites. Afterward, the drill is the same as it has been from the start. He and his aides assemble with coffee in his hotel suite, go over the plan for the day, check out the newspapers and, lately, pore over the campaign’s overnight polls. During the day he gets almost no exercise, eats the candy and junk food and naps slumped in his seat in his plane.

McCain takes an Ambien if he needs one, but in these last days there is scant sleep on the schedule. He planned to end Sunday with a post-midnight rally in Miami, then rest briefly and head to the airport for an 8 am departure for Tampa. From there he was to embarkon a seven-state, 18-hour odyssey across America, ending with Arizona, where he will hold a midnight rally on the courthouse steps of the old territorial capital of Prescott, the town where he has ended all his Senate campaigns. He was set to arrive at his condominium in Phoenix sometime after 2 am on Election Day.

Algerian-French artist’s work vandalised at Kochi art gallery over ‘obscenity’ allegations

India7 hr ago

Algerian-French artist Hanan Benammar's linocut prints were vandalised by two artists at an international exhibition in Kochi. The exhibition, curated by Anushka Rajendran and Damian Christinger, was organised by the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi and opened on October 18.

View all shorts

Live Blog

PHOTOS