PARKER, Ariz. — He still tells the story about the call he got at 2 a.m. from the woman in Chandler who was upset about changes in her garbage pick up, and the ossified joke concerning two Irish brothers (“The only ethnic group in America you can still joke about”) boozed up at a bar.

Just as he did in 2008, and 2000, and most likely in the tender years of his earliest campaigns here — long before “that one,” maverick, and not-a-maverick — he takes extra time for veterans, freshly scrubbed little kids and older women who wait patiently at the back of a senior center with one of his many books and a camera. He still calls the room “my friends.”

But less than two years after he was defeated by Barack Obama, nothing seems quite the same for Senator John McCain, who has gone from being his party’s candidate for president rallying 1,000 supporters at a Florida football stadium to furiously defending his Senate seat before 60 recession-weary residents in a Hampton Inn in Lake Havasu, Ariz.

Gone are the jovial back-and-forths with veteran biker dudes at state fairs, long bus rides through South Carolina watching the U.S. Open with Senator Lindsey Graham and visions of party dominance in Washington. Gone are his efforts to engage Mr. Obama directly; instead, he portrays himself as taking on the status quo of Mr. Obama’s Washington.