Less than 12 hours after polls closed on Super Tuesday, the press corps covering John McCain gathered in a hangar at Swift Aviation in Phoenix, Arizona, for another press conference. The focus, as it had been for more than a week, was on one question: How will John McCain repair the breach with the conservatives who have been so vociferously critical of his candidacy?

Reporters were obsessed with it. The McCain campaign was not. For weeks, McCain advisers had spoken with confidence about the inevitable coalescing around their man once he became the presumptive nominee.

Senator Lindsey Graham arrived as reporters waited. Graham is McCain's closest friend in the Senate and a trusted adviser. He is very quotable and very willing to be quoted, so reporters flock to him. Informal chats become impromptu press conferences.

And so it was last Wednesday, a few minutes after 9 A.M. As Graham started to answer questions, reporters pulled out their notebooks and turned on their audio recorders. Soon, television cameras and their bright lights were trained on Graham's face as he praised McCain for his leadership and made a case that McCain will be a strong nominee.

McCain, Graham said, will be able to present a "conservatism that is not a threat, that will be attractive to Reagan Democrats and independents." It was a telling description. Just as George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" bothered some conservatives--aren't most conservatives compassionate?--selling McCain as the nonthreatening conservative implies that other conservatives are threatening.

Moments later Joe Lieberman arrived. Some of the reporters hovering around Graham wandered over to Lieberman. The Connecticut senator, a former Democrat, said the key to a McCain victory would be his bipartisan appeal. "The important thing to win this election is to win the majority of independents and some Democrats. Senator McCain is a devoted Republican, but has always worked across party lines."

McCain walked up next, looking relaxed. He was wearing a navy sport coat, gray dress slacks, and a blue shirt without a tie. As always, McCain patiently tried to take a question from any reporter who wanted to ask one. He struck some conservative notes. He boasted of his "fundamental conservative philosophy" and said raising taxes would be "the worst thing we could do to our economy."

But many of his answers sounded the same bipartisan theme that had emerged from the exchanges with Graham and Lieberman. I used my question to press him on one possible source of the mistrust between McCain and movement conservatives: his demeanor.

McCain had just defended his record by citing his high ratings from the conservative groups Citizens Against Government Waste and Citizens for a Sound Economy. I suggested we stipulate that his record is more conservative than some of his critics have claimed. Then I asked McCain about the perception that he enjoys sticking his fingers in the eyes of conservatives when he disagrees with them--while he takes pleasure in working with Democrats. McCain didn't address the first claim and defended himself against the second.