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	McCain Relies on a Tight-Knit Circle of Confidants to Guide His Campaign
	Though that freewheeling style has been reined in during this tough presidential campaign, and McCain's easy way with the media has shown signs of a serious souring, the boys-on-the-bus model is how McCain has always liked to roll. Those who have known him for a long time say that it reflects the Arizona senator's preference for relying on a tightknit group of trusted intimates and his penchant for making decisions based on gut instincts. His brain trust includes not only intensely loyal Senate colleagues like Joseph Lieberman but a variety of yarn-spinners, joke-tellers, and tough, irreverent military veterans who shared with McCain his life's defining experience—wartime imprisonment and abuse in Vietnam. Unlike most politicians and candidates, McCain has avoided surrounding himself with layered ranks of political insiders, says his longtime fellow Arizona senator, John Kyl. "He's always had a small group around him, and people from a lot of interesting groups," says Kyl, a Republican. "And he's always very open to getting advice from them." That doesn't mean McCain doesn't call on old Washington hands to help run his show. Veteran lobbyists Charles Black and Rick Davis, both wise in the ways of big money and Republican strategy, have been longtime advisers and run his current campaign along with Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé put in charge over the summer to bring discipline to a flailing effort. They are the professionals, and Schmidt has been key to imposing order on McCain's more natural, off-the-cuff style. But going into the fall, McCain—who shocked the establishment by choosing largely unknown Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate—will have to pull back the curtain on how he makes his decisions so voters can trust his judgment, say GOP strategists. "He has to show that his gut is validated by information—that he's attracting first-class, competent people to help him," says one prominent Republican strategist. "He has to show that he's like Ronald Reagan—that his decisions are based on core principals and pragmatism." Mark Salter. If many Americans see McCain as a flawed hero, chastened by an awareness of his shortcomings but still best qualified, by experience and character, to serve his country as its president and commander in chief, the man most responsible for projecting the image is a down-to-earth guy named Mark Salter. Born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1955, the son of a decorated World War II and Korean War veteran, Salter spent four years repairing railroad tracks before attending college and eventually landing a job with U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. McCain hired him as a legislative aide in 1988, but Salter, who shared many of his boss's literary tastes (including Irish writer William Trevor), quickly became much more. With an almost uncanny ability to channel McCain's voice, even while giving it greater rhetorical loft and resonance, he became the senator's first speechwriter and later his chief of staff. Perhaps partly out of fascination with his own father's reluctance to discuss his war years, Salter also became McCain's secret-sharer, able to draw out and put into words the details and deeper influence of the senator's military past, from his struggles to live up to his Navy admiral forefathers to his years as a POW in Hanoi. Set down in the 1999 book Faith of My Fathers, which Salter wrote with McCain, that story has become the emotional heart of McCain's image. To the degree that presidential campaigns are more about personalities than issues, Salter is, in military terms, McCain's indispensable force-multiplier. If McCain were to win, Salter would likely remain his counselor and speechwriter. Charles Black. The top strategist in McCain's presidential run, Charles Black is a courtly southerner renowned as a tough-as-nails political operative who has played key roles in presidential campaigns for decades. Black grew up in Wilmington, N.C., and was inspired as a young man by Barry Goldwater. Known as Charlie to friends, he is seen as bringing a calm, level-headed—and usually disciplined—approach to such campaigns as those of Reagan, both Bushes, and Robert Dole. He was credited with helping to stabilize a wobbly McCain campaign earlier this year during a period of fierce challenges by competitors and fundraising disappointments. But as a prominent, longtime lobbyist, this Washington insider has been a controversial fit with McCain's long-promoted maverick credentials and criticism of special interests. Black, 60, resigned this year from BKSH & Associates—the profitable lobbying firm he helped found in an earlier form—apparently to avoid suggestions of conflicts of interest and unflattering attention to his influence work and past clients. Those clients have ranged from blue-chip companies to foreign dictators and rebel chiefs, including the likes of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and Jonas Savimbi of Angola. Black this year made a rare stumble in a Fortune interview, asserting that a terrorist attack on the United States would prove "a big advantage" for McCain. The candidate disowned the remark. Black apologized. The veteran lobbyist is not expected to have a formal role in a McCain administration. Lindsey Graham. There is no one he trusts more, McCain has said, than Lindsey Graham, the scrappy, independent-minded South Carolina Republican who since 2002 has occupied the Senate seat once owned by the legendary Strom Thurmond. The alliance formed almost spontaneously when McCain invited then Representative Graham to his office shortly after they met while working on the Clinton impeachment proceedings. McCain asked Graham if he would support his run for the presidency in 2000. Graham immediately signed on. Call it a marriage of two mavericks whose humor is as finely matched as their political agendas. The former Air Force officer (who was called back to judge-advocate duty during the 1991 Gulf War) and small-town attorney known as the class clown in his Central, S.C., high school days was part of the Republican revolution that took control of the House and the Senate in 1994. A devout Southern Baptist who is unyielding on abortion and other social issues and a tireless champion of the military, Graham quickly gained a reputation for astute political instincts and joined the anti-Newt Gingrich faction opposed to the then speaker's compromises with President Clinton. Graham alienated many South Carolina Republicans with his vigorous backing of McCain in 2000, which only strengthened his friendship with McCain. Differing only on his support for greater trade protection and the need for a marriage amendment, Graham echoed McCain's call for a military surge in Iraq and shares his views on torture, the rights of imprisoned terrorists, Social Security reform, immigration, and almost every other major policy issue. Unmarried, the 53-year-old Graham has been a tireless traveler and surrogate speaker for the McCain campaign, valuable not only as a counselor but as a friend who can take a joke as well as dish one out. Graham is talked about as a possible attorney general pick under McCain, but some party leaders believe they may need his vote more in the Senate. Orson Swindle. During McCain's five years in the Hanoi Hilton, Orson Swindle spent much of that time as his cellmate or in the adjacent cell. The two men quickly became friends, communicating with each other by tapping on the wall, relaying information about other American POWs. Swindle, who flew more than 200 missions in Vietnam before being shot down, was released in 1973. After returning home, he got an M.B.A. from Florida State University and eventually landed a job as director of the Reagan campaign's Georgia field office. A career in government followed, with Swindle establishing himself as a particularly staunch free-market conservative railing against the federal bureaucracy. His actions went well beyond the typical belt-tightening advocated by Reagan Republicans. Working for the Agriculture Department, he earned a reputation for turning down farmers' loan requests. In his next job, with the Commerce Department, he refused to fund projects that even whiffed of pork, famously holding up a proposed $12 million shopping and entertainment center in Texas. (After semiretiring in the early 1990s, Swindle agreed to serve as campaign director of Ross Perot's presidential bid in 1992.) Since their days in captivity, McCain and Swindle have remained close. In 1998, McCain recommended him for a spot on the Federal Trade Commission, which regulates proposed mergers —and today Swindle is a kind of character reference about McCain's POW days. In the South Carolina primary this year, when McCain found himself dogged by character attacks similar to those he encountered eight years ago, Swindle was there to back him up, appearing in a campaign spot. At 71, he may not be interested in a big appointment, but he is an obvious choice for secretary of veterans affairs. With Jay Tolson, Thomas Omestad, and Kent Garber Taken from here