A crusade for tighter campaign finance restrictions — along with a well-publicized spat he had when Keating challenged his integrity — helped McCain move past the scandal.

The campaign-finance push dovetailed with McCain’s opposition to appropriations earmarks, which he argues have a corrupting influence on lawmakers, to help him build a reputation as an advocate of “good government.”

Campaign Stops

In 2000, McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination on a promise to deliver “straight talk” to the American public. His momentum ground down when George W. Bush won the South Carolina primary, a contest that became famous for its bitter nature and an underground smear campaign run against McCain.

After Bush was elected president, McCain appeared to relish bucking him and other party leaders on a variety of issues, including the budget, tax cuts, the Sept. 11 commission and government-approved torture of detainees in the war against terrorism.

In 2006, he joined forces with Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy to forge a bipartisan deal on immigration legislation designed to enforce border-protection laws, implement a new guest-worker program and create a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants.

The measure did not make it into law, but McCain won praise for taking a political risk in advance of the 2008 Republican presidential primaries.

He would take political hits in the GOP primary for supporting the bill and — from Democrats later on — for backing away from it in the 110th Congress.

His primary campaign was once left for dead after it ran low on money and McCain reshuffled the staff.

He rebounded from a poor showing in Iowa to reconnect with the New Hampshire voters who favored him over Bush in 2000, winning there and using the Granite State as a springboard to the GOP nomination.

During the general election, Democrats accused McCain of changing his “maverick” stripes for political expediency and overstating his accomplishments as a bipartisan dealmaker.

“ John McCain has changed in profound and fundamental ways that I find personally really surprising, and frankly upsetting. It is not the John McCain as the senator who defined himself, quote, as a maverick, though questionable,” longtime friend John Kerry , D-Mass., said July 2008 on CBS. “This is want-to-be-president John McCain .”

Parting Shots

But on Wednesday, McCain was sharing a stage with Democratic senators in pursuit of legislation that would make some colleagues in both parties cringe.

It’s centerpiece is the establishment of a point of order against appropriations earmarks that were not approved by authorizing committees.

McCain mustered a bit of his hallmark outrage for the occasion.

“Our goal is not transparency. Our goal is elimination of earmarks,” he said. “There is no place for them in the process.”

There were other indications that “Mac is back,” as his supporters often chanted on the campaign trail.

Asked about McCaskill’s role as a television surrogate for the Obama campaign, McCain couldn’t resist a trademark barb: “Unfortunately, I saw her, too,”