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" Chris Jones tracked John McCain&amp;#039;s campaign in four installments for Esquire. From uncertain beginnings in August 2006&amp;#039;s Part 1, to the infighting in January 2008&amp;#039;s Part 2, the campaign&amp;#039;s comeback in April&amp;#039;s Part 3 and, finally, the real war revealed in this summer&amp;#039;s Part 4, the profiles offer the ultimate postscript after Election Day. Click here for all of Esquire&amp;#039;s election coverage in one place. So this is how the story ends. It was more than two years ago when I first met John McCain. We were in the back of a truck leaving New York City for Connecticut. He hadn&amp;#039;t officially entered the race, but he was already campaigning, already saw ground the way generals and football coaches see it: as acreage to be conquered. Those were the first of several thousand miles we would cover together.  He wasn&amp;#039;t anything like I expected him to be. He was warm and funny and honest and smart. I liked him a lot, as a man. We spent hours together. I remember once flying up the coast to Maine, just the two of us on a small plane, reading newspapers and drinking beer. In the quiet spaces between our conversations, I wondered whether I was sitting beside the next President of the United States.  It seemed unlikely last summer, especially when we were lost in the corn in Iowa. It felt as though he wasn&amp;#039;t going to win the Republican nomination, let alone the general election.  But then came New Hampshire. McCain ran in New Hampshire as though he was running for governor. I think I&amp;#039;ve seen every last square inch of that state, and John McCain went there many more times than I did. He knew that New Hampshire meant everything.  That night in his lucky hotel suite, watching the results come in, it felt as though anything was possible. There was such a charge in the room. Mitt Romney called, and Mike Huckabee called, and McCain&amp;#039;s small band of loyalists went outside for a smoke, and they mapped out a scenario, state by state, by which McCain would win the nomination.  The future unfolded exactly as they envisioned it that night. Optimism won.  But something was lost in New Hampshire, too. That was the last time I saw McCain the way I first saw him. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, he had grown smaller and smaller -- not just in my viewfinder, but in my estimation. He had traded optimism for cynicism. He was irritable and sometimes seemed grasping, as though he would do whatever it took to win. John McCain, the politician, seemed to be on the verge of outflanking John McCain, the man.  Then he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. I&amp;#039;d like to think someone else picked her for him, but how&amp;#039;s that the better option? She represented everything wrong with the Republican Party -- the same intolerant elements that McCain had fought so hard against years earlier -- and now there she was, smiling on the stage beside him. Historians will no doubt cite the collapsing economy and the legacy of George W. Bush as impossible obstacles for McCain to overcome. But for me, he lost the election when he picked Palin, because he lost the last vestige of his former self.  By Election Night, I&amp;#039;d given up trying to find what was left of him. I was at Disney World in Orlando. As state after state was projected for Obama on my hotel room TV, fireworks were exploding outside my window. They go off every night here at the same time, but it still sounded like celebration.  Except I didn&amp;#039;t feel like celebrating. It&amp;#039;s been a long couple of years. I know more about life than I did two years ago -- about the costs of it, about the failures of it, about what it takes. Thinking about it made me feel sad, to be honest. I imagined McCain sitting in his hotel room in Phoenix, watching the same numbers on a different hotel room TV -- watching Pennsylvania fall, watching Ohio fall, sinking a little deeper into his couch, knowing it was over.  I couldn&amp;#039;t help remembering how this all started, and most of all I couldn&amp;#039;t help remembering the John McCain I used to know. I wondered how long it would take him to shed the candidate&amp;#039;s skin and become the man he was. I wondered if it was even possible in the time he has left.  I hope it is. I hope this story has an epilogue. RELATED STORIES FROM CHRIS JONES&amp;#039; McCAIN SERIES:  PART 1: One of Us PART 2: John McCain&amp;#039;s Last War PART 3: Two Nights... PART 4: The Pearl... COMPLETE COVERAGE: Everything You Need to Know About the Election   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5333/history-of-mccain-for-president-110508/>