John McCain just arrived in Indianapolis, otherwise known as stop No. 4 on his seven state, 22-hour campaign extravaganza leading into Election Day. So far, there hasn’t been much big news today. McCain is delivering pretty much the same stump speech he’s been giving for the past week or so, hitting Obama as the “redistributor in chief” and talking up his own cred as someone who would enter the job with decades of experience, especially on foreign policy. What’s interesting are the little things. For one, McCain, like many candidates in the final heat of a campaign, is losing his voice a little bit. That’s bad news for the folks for the several hundred people who met him at an airport rally here. Not only are the acoustics pretty bad, but the McCain gathering seems to be positioned directly under the flight path for incoming planes here. So far, four massive jetliners have flown directly over McCain’s head as he has been speaking, making it almost impossible for folks on the ground to hear. That may not be the best news for McCain, who is struggling to keep Indiana from going blue. Polls here show McCain virtually tied with Obama heading into Tuesday. Even so, McCain hasn't spent much time here. Today's visit was only the third time McCain has been in the state since the spring.

It’s hard to believe, but the end is in sight. With Election Day less than 24 hours away, John McCain will hit nine cities and seven battleground states today in a grueling schedule that will have the candidate and his entourage on the road for the next 22 hours. After a midnight rally in Miami, last night, McCain this morning flies to Tampa and then is scheduled to continue on to rallies in Bristol, Tenn., near the Virginia border; Pittsburgh; Indianapolis; Roswell, N.M.; Las Vegas; and will end up in Prescott, Ariz., where he will hold a midnight rally on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, the place one of his political heroes, Barry Goldwater, began and ended his own presidential campaign. From there, McCain will head home to Phoenix, where he is set to arrive around 4 a.m. EST. Yet McCain won’t get to sleep in. Ignoring his usual Election Day rituals of seeing a movie and awaiting the results, the candidate will likely be back on the road early Tuesday, when, after voting, he is tentatively scheduled to hold last-minute rallies in Colorado and New Mexico. He’s tentatively scheduled to be back in Phoenix around 7 p.m. EST—around the time polls begin closing in Indiana and Virginia, two GOP strongholds that threaten to turn blue this election. It’s unusual to see a presidential candidate actually campaigning on Election Day, but McCain’s advisers continue to insist the race is tightening even more than what public polls suggest. Speaking to reporters on the plane last night, Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, repeated a line he and other aides have been using in recent days. "We are in striking distance," he declared.

John McCain has made no secret of the fact he’s very superstitious. Much has been written about the items he’s carries—the lucky nickel, the lucky feather, the lucky quarter, the lucky rock, etc—and the rituals he’s adhered to in hopes that fate will swing his way. On the night of the New Hampshire primary earlier this year, McCain slept in the same hotel, the same room and even the same side of the bed as did back in 2000 when he won the state. “Some people think I’m crazy,” McCain admitted to reporters on his bus earlier this year. During the primaries, McCain refused to allow himself to be called the frontrunner or even refer to himself as the nominee until it had officially happened so as not to jinx his luck. That’s why it’s so interesting to listen to McCain’s speeches today. Even after he won the nomination, he has continued to insert phrases like, “if I am elected” or “if I win the presidency—irritating some GOP supporters who wanted McCain to be more forceful. He still uses “if” a lot, but within the past few weeks, McCain has started to sprinkle his speeches when a few uses of “when.” “When I am president, we are going to win in Iraq and win in Afghanistan,” McCain told a crowd in Miami earlier this week. Yesterday, he accused Barack Obama for supporting millions of dollars in corporate giveaways to oil companies. “When I am president, we are not going to let that happen,” McCain declared. He also vowed yesterday that there will be more offshore drilling “when I am president.” It’s unclear when McCain became more comfortable using “when” as opposed to “if” but it’s a small and perhaps telling change in a candidate who has believed all his life in luck and rituals.

If a reporter wanted to craft a dire lede about the final days of John McCain’s campaign, the signs are coming in droves—although it’s something more akin to a satirical movie like “Airplane!” or “Hot Shots.” It all started on Monday, when McCain’s motorcade had to pull over almost immediately upon arrival in Fayetteville, N.C. The problem: McCain’s armored SUV had a flat tire. Uh oh! Bad metaphor alert! But that was nothing. Yesterday morning in Miami, reporters looked up to see a large swarm of giant birds circling in the sky above a coffee shop where McCain was meeting with local supporters. An hour later, it happened again, as McCain took the stage at a small rally near Little Havana. This reporter initially thought they were buzzards—though, admittedly, my expertise on that species is largely limited to repeated childhood viewings of Looney Tunes. Indeed, you can only imagine the jokes when, later that afternoon, reporters were sitting at another event in West Palm Beach and looked up in the sky to see a pack of hundreds of giant birds circling the perimeter above. (See photo above.) Alfred Hitchcock could not have crafted a better scene, though, in truth, it was a moment more likened to something you’d see on a show like “Arrested Development.”

Concerned that a pack of black cats might be next—or, heaven forbid, the Grim Reaper—I brought up the birds to Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide and speechwriter, last night on the flight from Florida to Ohio, where McCain is scheduled to spend the next two days. “They were hawks!” Salter declared. “Hawks!” I asked him how he knew. “Did you have your binoculars out?” I said. “I’ve seen them before,” Salter, a native Iowan, told me, with a trace of faux exasperation. “Hawks!”

For a campaign that has a lot of ground to cover between now and Tuesday, the atmosphere on the plane over the past few days has been pretty upbeat, even jovial at times. Senior aides insist that McCain’s chances are better than the polls suggest. But that’s not the only reason for the smiles. The end of what has seemed like the longest campaign in history is finally in sight. Steve Duprey, the plane’s resident funny man, has been handing out his stock of unofficial McCain swag, including “Country First” coffee cups and McCain chocolate bars. “No milk chocolate left folks,” he said yesterday. Coming back to talk to reporters, Salter, at times, has had the air of a high school senior on the verge of graduation. He’s been handing reporters his BlackBerry to show off a picture of his house in Maine, where he plans to retreat after this, even if McCain wins. “Five days,” he said last night. “Five days.”

Six days out, John McCain still hasn’t brought up Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright, but the GOP nominee appears to be ratcheting up his attack on Obama’s ties to 60s era radical Bill Ayers and, in the process, picking a fight with the media. It all started Tuesday, when the McCain campaign called on the Los Angeles Times to release a video it had mentioned in a story published last April, which described a 2003 banquet honoring Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and Palestinian scholar who has been highly critical of Israel. The story, which was about Obama’s friendships with Palestinian Americans in Chicago, quoted from a speech Obama gave at the event, in which he talked of his friendship with Khalidi. The paper reported it had viewed a videotape of the dinner provided to it by an unnamed source.

Five months after the story was published, talk of the videotape resurfaced in blogs and subsequently in a McCain campaign release yesterday calling on the paper to release the tape. McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb accused the paper of “intentionally suppressing information that provide a clearer link” between Obama and Khalidi. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job—make information public.”

This morning, McCain took it a step further, telling a radio station in Miami that Ayers also attended the event and implying that the Times was guilty of a double standard for not releasing the tape. “The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public,” McCain said. “I’m not in the business about talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet. I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different.”

Less than an hour later, Sarah Palin, at a rally in Ohio, echoed the talking points. “Maybe some politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own,” she said. “In this case we have a newspaper willing to throw aside even the public’s right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed. And if there’s a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in kowtowing, then the LA Times, you’re winning. But it’s not too late, and if there is an ounce of credibility there, if the newspaper wants to keep that shred of credibility, let alone its dignity, than I say the public has a right to know. Let’s go to the videotape, LA Times.”

It’s unclear where McCain got the information that Ayers may also be connected to the video. That detail has not been published anywhere. Asked about where the candidate had gotten the information, a McCain senior adviser talking to reporters on the plane this afternoon simply repeated the call for the Times to release the video.

For its part, the Times, in a story published today, said it had promised its source that it would not release the video. Citing criticism from the McCain camp that its decision was somehow tied to protecting Obama’s election chances, the paper pointed out that it was the first news organization to even report on the video. 'The Times is not suppressing anything," said Jamie Gold, a Times readers representative. "Just the opposite. The LA Times brought this matter to light."

Spotted in the McCain audience today in Miami: a large plastic banner that read "Stop Socialism. Vote McCain."

George W. Bush may be a no-show on the campaign trail for John McCain, but his little brother isn’t. Jeb Bush is on the stage this morning with McCain at a small rally at a lumber yard in Miami’s Little Havana. It wasn’t long ago that Jeb Bush was rumored as a possible 2008 contender, and he’s still very popular today, especially among South Florida’s Cuban community. When the former Florida governor arrived on stage this morning, the crowd on hand cheered wildly, as much (if not a little more) than they did for McCain. Also on hand today: Gov. Charlie Crist, looking VERY tan as always; and Sens. Mel Martinez, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

McCain will be in Florida all day today before heading to Ohio this evening, where he’ll launch a statewide bus tour tomorrow. Florida is among a handful of states that voted Republican in 2004 that McCain is desperately trying to hold onto this time around. Yet McCain’s schedule here isn’t built around rallies where undecided voters will be able to see him. This morning’s event was a small ticketed event, attracting a crowd of a few hundred or so. Later, he’ll go to Tampa for a national security roundtable, and then to a so-called “Joe the Plumber” event at a sign company in West Palm Beach.

McCain aides have long said their guy won’t attract the big crowds that Barack Obama gets. (They are leaving that up to Sarah Palin.) But their strategy these final days seems to be centered on getting images of McCain on local television talking to small groups of “real” people. Indeed, the McCain campaign again played the Barack Obama as celebrity card in a new ad out today, timed to Obama’s 30-minute ad tonight set to air on TV. McCain aides felt the “celebrity” attack brought their campaign within striking distance this summer. We’ll have to see if it works again.

Heading into the final week of the campaign, every second of a candidate’s schedule counts. That’s why it seems a little strange that John McCain has been spending so much time driving lately. On Sunday, he spent more than two hours driving from event to event in Ohio. Yesterday, his commute time added up to more than three hours, including an hour drive from his campaign plane in Allentown, Pa., to an event in Pottsville, and then another hour from Pottsville to Hershey, where he’s holding a joint rally with Sarah Palin this morning. It’s not that driving is anything new to McCain. Back in the primaries, McCain spent a lot of time driving through Florida and South Carolina on his Straight Talk Express, but he was often multitasking, talking to reporters. In Florida last week, he spent a leg of his bus tour between Daytona Beach and Sarasota doing interviews with local reporters. But the past few days, it’s been only McCain and his advisers on the bus. Campaign aides argue the drives are necessary since not all campaign stops are close to an airport where his plane can land. But is it a good idea for a candidate to spend so much time commuting from stop to stop with so little time left on the clock before Election Day?

John McCain woke up this morning in chilly Cleveland, Ohio, a state he desperately needs to win eight days from now if he is to have any chance of making it into the White House. With polls here showing him running essentially even with Barack Obama heading into the final week of the campaign, McCain spent the morning trying to shore up his economic credentials in a state that has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s financial meltdown. Appearing before a group of supporters and volunteers (including many out-of-staters here working on the senator’s behalf), McCain went after Obama’s economic policies, tying him to Democratic leadership back in Washington.

“This election comes down to how you want your hard earned money spent. Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the Presidency and the Democratic leaders who have been running congress for the past two years—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? This is a dangerous threesome,” McCain declared. It’s a line of attack that McCain and his supporters have been pursuing more heatedly in the final days of the campaign, slyly reminding voters that if Obama wins, Washington will be under one-party rule, with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress. Several McCain advisers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, of McCain’s closest friends, believe it’s a winning argument for McCain—that voters prefer a divided government. (Indeed, McCain's "threesome" line this morning was a big crowd pleaser--perhaps a little too much, considering the subsequent giggling among some members of the audience after the fact.)

Perhaps the most interesting part of the event wasn’t what McCain said, but rather who he stood there with. Lined up behind McCain was what the senator described as his team of economic advisers, who included several people who came VERY close to joining the GOP ticket. There was Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and onetime McCain rival who stood behind the nominee; and Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO and possible California gubernatorial nominee whom McCain has come to trust as one of his closest advisers. Even Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty showed up, a dark horse candidate among McCain and his inner circle right up until decision day. Eyeing the scene, you couldn't help but wonder: How would the race be different if McCain had picked one of these three as his running mate?

Not too long ago, these folks were, as the McCain campaign might say, the biggest celebrities in the world. Network TV crews staked out their homes. Reporters scrutinized their every public statement for clues about the double super secret VP selection process. Then one day, it was over. While Romney still travels with an adviser, Pawlenty has gone back to being the solo-traveling governor whose lack of entourage sometimes led reporters to mistake him for one of McCain’s campaign advance staffers. This morning, Pawlenty was spotted in the lobby of McCain’s hotel handling his own bags, surrounded by Republican faithful who either didn’t know who he was or just didn’t care. After the event, the small pool of reporters who travel with McCain in his motorcade were waiting for the senator to board his vehicle outside the hotel’s front door when they spotted a tall dark-haired man making his way in between the vans out into the street. It was Pawlenty, alone, hailing his own cab to go back to Minnesota.