Republican John McCain intends to run in 2010 for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, and the recent history of senators thwarted in bids for president suggests he’ll be able to rebound smartly from his loss to Democrat Barack Obama in last November’s White House contest.

John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who narrowly lost in 2004 to President George W. Bush , coasted to an easy victory last year for a fifth Senate term. Even South Dakota Democrat George S. McGovern, fresh off his 1972 landslide defeat at the hands of President Richard M. Nixon, came back to win a third Senate term in 1974, though he lost when he went to that well one more time in 1980.

Obama even gave McCain a big break by taking his strongest potential Arizona Democratic challenger out of the picture. Obama selected Janet Napolitano, a popular governor due to run up against the state’s term-limit law in 2010, as his pick to head the Department of Homeland Security. Until she accepted the Cabinet post, Napolitano appeared likely to run for the Senate in 2010, and early hypothetical polls suggested she would be a strong contender.

No one else appears poised to provide such a threat with Napolitano moved on to Washington. The most recent Democratic Senate nominee was Jim Pederson, a wealthy real estate developer who ran a vigorous campaign in 2006 but nonetheless lost to Republican incumbent Jon Kyl by a substantial 10 percentage-point margin. “I doubt he would take on McCain,” said Bruce Merrill, a pollster and professor emeritus at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Merrill said of McCain, “I really don’t think he’s going to have much difficulty being re-elected.” He noted that McCain — who first came to public attention as a Vietnam War POW and has served more than a quarter-century in Congress — has massive advantages in his nearly universally known name, fundraising ability and political organization in his home state.

Brett Mecum, interim executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, expressed confidence in McCain’s 2010 prospects, saying, “He’s been re-elected and re-elected and re-elected again.”

McCain supporters can draw additional hope from the fact that he defeated Obama by nearly 9 percentage points in the race for the 10 electoral votes in Arizona, a state where Democrats have otherwise made some significant advances over the past few election cycles.

McCain, however, cannot assume his re-election is a slam dunk, said Thomas Volgy, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona and a former mayor of Tucson.

One of the big problems McCain faced in the presidential contest was the damage done to the Republican Party “brand” by the domestic and foreign crises that plunged Bush and his GOP administration into deep unpopularity.

And, in a rarity among states after the past two strongly Democratic election cycles, McCain will be running in a state where Republicans are fully in charge of the state government. How the state responds to current economic problems may generate what issues arise in 2010, said John A. Garcia, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona. Both chambers of the legislature are controlled by the party, and Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer recently moved up to interim governor after Napolitano resigned to become Homeland Security secretary.

And given the sharp downturn in the nation’s economy, McCain’s strong stand against federal spending on designated state and local projects — known as congressional earmarks — may be harder for him to justify to Arizona voters this time around. “When the economy is bad and we need things, it may not play very well,” said David R. Berman, a senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy and a professor emeritus of political science at Arizona State University.

McCain also needs to refurbish the image that he has sought to burnish throughout his Senate career — as a political maverick willing to buck his party on some major issues — but which was eroded somewhat by his efforts to play strongly to the GOP’s strongly conservative national base during his presidential campaign. Yet he must do so without alienating, and possibly inciting a primary challenge, from the potent conservative wing of the Arizona Republican Party, which has not always been thrilled when McCain has strayed from party orthodoxy on issues such as immigration, campaign finance regulation and global climate change.

Since conceding his defeat to Obama in a conciliatory speech last Nov. 4, McCain has attempted a balancing act. He has held collegial discussion with Obama, who hosted a dinner in tribute of McCain on the eve of his Jan. 20 inauguration, and scolded the handful of Republican senators who had sought to delay the secretary of State confirmation of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.