Party Spoilers.(The Talk of the Town)

Tucker Bounds and Michael Goldfarb, two of John McCain's top media operatives, were bent over laptops last Wednesday night in a glass-enclosed room a mile away from the site of the Democratic Convention. They sat, with five other campaign workers, at a conference table surrounded by eight video panels. Senator Evan Bayh, of Indiana, appeared on a screen, and the sound of Democrats jeering in the Pepsi Center roared through the small room.

"Is he getting booed?" Bounds asked eagerly.

"No, they were booing us," Goldfarb said.

The rejuvenation of John McCain's political fortunes in the last month owes a lot to his communications staff. The candidate has abandoned his free-flowing chats with reporters, and remade his campaign into a disciplined vehicle for delivering simple, oft-repeated messages. In Denver, that message was that Obama is "Not Ready '08," a phrase that was plastered on signs around the makeshift McCain office.

For the first two days of the Convention, Goldfarb and Bounds's real allies were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Goldfarb was surprised at how eager the press was to cover the Obama-Clinton squabbling, a story that he and his colleagues advanced by means of a steady diet of quotes and videos showing criticisms of Obama from Hillary, Bill, and even Joe Biden. "There was a pre-written drama here," he said. "All you had to do was light the match."

As Bayh spoke, the team digested his comments and debated avenues of attack. "Why don't we pull out the V.P. research and whack him?" Joe Pounder--his real name--said.

Bounds told Goldfarb to use a quote of Obama's from a 2004 interview, and he quickly pulled it up on his computer. " 'We have to finish the job,' " Bounds read aloud. " 'We owe it not only to the troops who sacrificed their lives, but also the Iraqi people.' " The group synthesized the anti-Bayh research and blasted it to the press in an e-mail.