The Page

By Mark Halperin

McCain's Nerve Center Rick Davis has worked on Republican presidential campaigns for almost 30 years. After running John McCain's 2000 long-shot bid, he returned as campaign manager last summer to help engineer the candidate's comeback by, among other things, making major cuts in spending. With no fancy office (or even a cubicle) at McCain's Arlington, Va., headquarters, Davis, 50, directs an operation of about 100 employees, including many twentysomething staffers brand-new to presidential politics. Here's a tour of his work space.

1 ST. JUDE STATUE This gift from a supporter arrived just before McCain's political resurrection last August. The patron saint of desperate causes perches permanently at the edge of Davis' desk, in the exact spot it occupied when McCain started to surge.

2 THREE-HOLE PUNCH An old-fashioned guy in the information age, Davis is a fan of real binders filled with real paper, and he often does his own collating. "My world revolves around punching holes," he says.

3 DAILY SCHEDULE The candidate's itinerary sits side by side with Davis' own. (On this day, McCain's first event: "8:30 a.m. Haircut with Mario, Senate.")

4 BLACKBERRYS Davis has two: one from the campaign and one personal device with the telephone number he has had for "10 years that everybody else seems to know."

5 COMPUTERS Again, two: an official campaign desktop and a Sony Vaio notebook (complete with a James Bond theme) that he takes on the road. At work, he uses one mostly for e-mail and one for the Internet.

6 AARP CALCULATOR Davis uses this promotional item from the senior citizens' group because, given "my advanced age, my staff seemed to think that I required a little extra assistance when dealing with numbers."

VIDEO TOUR Watch McCain campaign manager Rick Davis give a tour of his desk at thepage.time.com/rickdavisdesktour

Bitter-Sweet In '08 Mark Halperin reports from the campaign every day on thepage.time.com

With reporting by Randy James, Katie Rooney