Washington —- The rise and fall and rise of John McCain's second bid for the GOP presidential nomination is a tale of perseverance, hard work, retail politics and proof that the guy's not kidding when he calls himself "the luckiest man in the world."

"Some of it was by design. A lot of it was luck and just drawing to one inside straight after another," Mark McKinnon, a top McCain adviser, said after he and his candidate went to the White House last week to accept President Bush's endorsement.

Luck, design, whatever —- the McCain campaign is one for the books. It began as a front-running effort seemingly destined for victory. Only New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani challenged McCain in the polls.

But by last spring, McCain's campaign appeared doomed. His support for the much-criticized troop "surge" in Iraq and continued effort in the Senate toward a compromise with Democrats on illegal immigration was rewarded with declining poll numbers, a fund-raising meltdown and challenges from promising new candidates.

Adding to the slump was an early campaign style that failed to play to what had been McCain's strength in his 2000 presidential bid: town-hall style meetings where he could talk one on one with voters.

Tom Loeffler, a lobbyist and former Texas congressman who heads the McCain fund-raising operation, began getting used to potential donors saying they weren't much interested in investing in a loser.

"It was a campaign that had in the eyes of many people collapsed," he said.

In mid-April, two weeks shy of the formal launch of the campaign, McCain was shedding staffers and cutting consultant contracts. In July, mired in single-digit poll numbers and continued cash problems, McCain forced out five top advisers, including several who had been with him for years.

The campaign stripped down to a bare-bones effort that at times looked more like a gubernatorial race than a presidential campaign, eschewing the private jets favored by other candidates for commercial flights and a bus dubbed the Straight Talk Express.

It was the best thing that ever happened to McCain, some say.

"It fell apart, and then he basically started from scratch again and did what he did in 1999" when his first presidential bid took off, said Dick Bennett, an independent New Hampshire pollster. "He basically rebuilt it one voter at a time."

An obvious contrast

Town hall meeting by town hall meeting, McCain regained supporters while Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney took turns as presumed front-runner. Giuliani traded on his post-Sept. 11 fame. Thompson was a darling of conservatives. And Romney, who became McCain's main opponent, dipped deeply into the fortune he had made as a business executive to propel himself to the top of the polls.

The contrast between him and McCain was obvious at South Carolina's Greenville-Spartanburg Airport in mid-October as the Arizona senator queued up, emptied his pockets and removed his shoes like everybody else heading for the US Airways flight back to Washington.

"It was a matter of doing everything we could to stay in the game," McKinnon said. "That was really tough. McCain was flying coach and carrying his own bags. We were literally day to day in terms of finances."

Luck kicked in when people started voting.

"A hundred things had to happen, most of them improbable," McKinnon said. "We were a lucky campaign."

The strategy was simple. McCain had to win in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. But his first stroke of luck came in Iowa, where he finished fourth.

On Jan. 3, caucus day in Iowa, Romney was riding high and counting on a victory to cement his front-runner status. Inside the McCain campaign, the Iowa strategy relied on getting help from others: A win by anybody other than Romney would be a win for McCain.

That somebody turned out to be Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher whose campaign was fueled by support from Iowa evangelicals.

The campaign continued on to New Hampshire, a state McCain won in his unsuccessful 2000 race against Bush. As in Iowa, the McCain strategy counted heavily on somebody beating, or helping to beat, Romney.

This time, that somebody turned out to be Giuliani, who in an epic miscalculation had decided to bet his entire campaign on Florida, leaving New Hampshire's moderate GOP voters to McCain.

McCain scored a narrow win over Romney.

The comeback was on.

Something unfathomable

As expected, Romney took Michigan on Jan. 15. But McCain had built up just enough momentum to win South Carolina, beating Huckabee by a margin of less than 15,000 votes. It probably would not have happened, McKinnon said, if Huckabee had spent his time and money courting South Carolina's sizable evangelical vote instead of campaigning in Michigan.

McCain, now on a roll, easily erased Giuliani's presumed advantage in Florida, won the endorsement of its popular governor, Charlie Crist, and claimed the primary as January closed.

Luck having done its thing, McCain opened February with a big Super Tuesday win that knocked Romney from the race and left McCain the presumptive nominee.

On Tuesday, McCain clinched the nomination with wins in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island, putting him over the number of delegates needed.

"The failure of conservatives to congregate around a single candidate early in the process certainly helped McCain quite a lot," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist.

Now the question is whether McCain can bring his intimate campaigning style to bear in a nationwide race.

"A general election is much more by media," said Loeffler. "But he will still be following the style he believes in, the more retail approach of reaching out to America."

There's no reason to believe the perseverance that brought him the nomination won't be there in the general election.

But what kind of luck would it take to win the presidency?

Perhaps something unfathomable like a Democratic Party divided on racial, gender and ethnic lines between two candidates involved in a prolonged, increasingly nasty battle and spending their money to smack each other around while the luckiest man in the world sits back and enjoys the show.