Western-Star.com

Editor's note: Dayton Daily News reporter Laura A. Bischoff followed Republican John McCain for two days last week as he made stops across Ohio. This story peeks behind the curtain of a campaign in its final days.

What do you get when a presidential candidate tours Ohio in the final throes before Election Day? Choreographed chaos.

Day One: Start in Maumee, have dogs sniff your bags, stern Secret Service wand your appendages. Drive to Defiance. Pass a guy wearing a hardhat with antlers standing on the street corner. Listen to the 18-minute John McCain speech. Drive to Tiffin for an "impromptu" stop at a doughnut shop. Watch people's faces light up as they catch a glimpse of presidential candidate up close. Drive to Sandusky. Listen to the speech again. See a clump of Barack Obama supporters corralled on a distant street corner. Drive to Elyria, zip past Obama supporters on a street corner, listen to the speech again, marvel at Meghan McCain's black platform shoes. Drive to Mentor, listen to the speech again. Drive to Youngstown, collapse in bed, drift off to sleep with the final speech lines in your head. Total mileage: 365. Total hours: 14.

Day Two: Rinse and repeat with different cities, same speech. Drill, Baby, Drill.

How the heck does a 72-year-old man do this for nearly two years?

Two-day push

The rally sites are different but the sights and sounds are the same. The crowds chant USA, USA. Joe the Plumber, Joe the Plumber. John McCain, John McCain. The signs say McCain Country, McCain Palin 2008, Mac is Back. And the campaign strategically hangs giant American flags and Country First banners so that press photographers will capture them. Oh, and someone hands out red and blue inflatable plastic bats that all Ohioans automatically know to smack together to increase the noise level.

The McCain campaign made a final two-day push for Ohio votes with a bus tour on Thursday and Friday. The motorcade includes McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus, three buses loaded with reporters and photographers, a staff bus, miscellaneous vans and sedans plus a swarm of U.S. Secret Service, Ohio Highway Patrol and local police cars. It closed down interstates and stopped traffic on the 600 miles through a dozen cities.

Here are some quirky scenes along the way:

Pulling into Defiance, a man wearing a hardhat with fake deer antlers catches the eye of a horde of press photographers. They press down on their shutter buttons as their bus cruises past Antler Man and then chuckle at what they captured.

Driving through Sandusky County, a sign in the middle of an empty field says "Corn Maze for Blondes."

McCain gives a shout out to Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Defiance only to find out he's Joe the No Show. Wurzelbacher shows up later, dressed like a working man action figure in jeans, cowboy boots and a Carhart T-shirt. McCain introduces the new instant celebrity in Mentor as "an American hero and a great citizen of Ohio and my role model and the man I'm fighting for and small businesses all over America like him."

Driving on Interstate 90 near Ohio 611, the motorcade comes to a dead stop in the left lane and within nanoseconds Secret Service agents are on the road and on the lookout. A reporter for Fox News is on the phone to his newsroom, breathlessly describing the 30-second incident, which turns out to be nothing.

Traveling with McCain on both days is U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has a quick wit and terrific comic timing. Graham, who introduces McCain, says, "Anybody see the infomercial last night? Thank God for cable. If we had played that at a prison camp it'd have violated the Geneva Convention."

A couple of gaffes

On Friday in Steubenville along the Ohio River, McCain draws a few thousand Republicans for a rally in front of the Jefferson County Courthouse. "I'm surprised that there are that many Republicans here. This is a pretty Democratic area," said Robert Wetherell, who is wearing his NRA hat and 'I Vote Pro-Life' sticker.

At a rally in Steubenville, McCain starts reading off signs in the crowd: "Doug the Undertaker" is among them.

McCain calls New Philadelphia "North Philadelphia" but corrects his mistake, saying North Philadelphia is part of a big city while New Philadelphia is the heartland of America. "New Philadelphia is where we're going to win this election," McCain says.

Making a speech five or six times a day with your every move photographed, your every syllable recorded, cannot be easy. Especially when you mess up. At a baseball field in Tuscora Park in New Philadelphia, McCain told the crowd of about 2,000 "And we're gonna bring America back to Ohio!"

Small-town support

Kathy Eddy of Wintersville said she supports McCain because of his values. "We have two small children and we just want to see this country to stick to the conservative values that our fathers and grandfathers taught us," Eddy said.

Jarrett Severance of Toronto, Ohio, already voted for McCain by absentee ballot. He leaves the day after the election for Army National Guard boot camp at Fort Knox. The 20-year-old said he thinks McCain can still pull off a victory. "I didn't think so at first. But he started coming back and now he's only like about one point behind Obama. And this is a huge state," he said.

Jake Tredway, 12, gave Obama the thumbs down in Steubenville. The fifth grader is convinced the Democrat would raise his taxes.

When asked why he wasn't in school on Friday, Oct. 31, Jake said, "Ah, we were just having a Halloween party anyway."