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While these fear-driven messages are focused on Obama, evangelicals have had their own fears about McCain. Although few evangelical leaders endorsed McCain during the primary season, their change of heart gathered steam in September.

Beginning in the 1980s, McCain and politically active conservative evangelicals have had several bruising encounters, which both sides are now eager to forget.

On March 14, 1973, the North Vietnamese released McCain. After extensive medical treatment, he served the Navy in many capacities, including as a liaison to Congress. Around this time, McCain's marriage fell apart due to his unfaithfulness. His wife granted him a divorce in February 1980. Five months later, he remarried. (McCain admitted at the recent Saddleback Civil Forum that his first marriage's end has been his greatest personal failing.)

McCain's appetite for politics grew, and in 1981, he decided to run for Congress. Close friends, such as the late senator John Tower (R-Texas), gave him advice and funds, and lobbied the Republican establishment on his behalf. McCain realized early on that conservative Arizona wanted a pro-life candidate. He willingly obliged.

In 1986, the rising star was elected to the Senate, replacing Barry Goldwater. But it wasn't long before McCain's relations with national evangelical leaders soured. In 1989, McCain supported his mentor Tower, who had retired from the Senate, in a bitter confirmation battle for Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush. Tower ran into allegations of drunkenness and womanizing. McCain was furious over how the Christian Right, led by Moral Majority cofounder Paul Weyrich, savaged Tower, causing the nomination to fail. McCain thought these accusers were hypocritical. "The sins Tower was accused of were hardly Washington novelties," McCain would later write.

McCain's rocky relationship with evangelicals dates at least to this incident. But McCain continued to vote pro-life and support evangelicals on other issues. Gary Bauer, himself a former candidate for president and now head of the conservative nonprofit American Values, says he found the senator "quite helpful" on evangelicals' concerns upon first meeting him.

Around this time, McCain struck a more lenient stance on abortion alongside other moderates. They felt the Human Life Amendment was unattainable and that the party should amend its platform. In 1996, McCain led the charge to do that. He badly lost that fight, but wasn't finished tangling with social conservatives.

Within three years, McCain was on the presidential campaign trail, focusing on the New Hampshire primary. McCain positioned himself as a populist who fought power brokers and special interest groups, and who remained moderately pro-life. His campaign's goal was to outmaneuver then Texas governor George W. Bush, who had the Republican establishment's clear support.

In early 2000, McCain's reputation was badly mauled in one of the darker chapters in recent American politics. After soundly beating Bush in the New Hampshire primary (by 18 percentage points), the campaign moved to South Carolina. There, an anonymous smear campaign targeted McCain, alleging he was homosexual, that he was mentally unstable due to his imprisonment, that his wife abused drugs, and that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. (In 1991, the McCains adopted a needy girl from Bangladesh.) The Bush campaign denied any connection to these fabrications. McCain lost the South Carolina primary and his public support plummeted.

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10