One day he was being courted as John Kerry’s running mate; another day he was rumored to be replacing Dick Cheney on the Bush ticket. On many days he was defending his [#image: /photos/54cbf9a85e7a91c52822fd29]Democratic friend against the attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; at the same time, he was campaigning side by side with his newer friend, the president, once even hugging him and getting a kiss on the forehead in return. Both candidates have used his image to their advantage in their TV ads.

And with nearly every report about Senator John McCain and the unprecedented tightrope he’s navigated, there’s been a reference to the ugliness of four years ago—the South Carolina Republican primary of 2000, the do-or-die battle of George W. Bush’s political life to that point.

McCain says “it’s over,” he’s buried the hatchet, it’s no longer worth revisiting. But the evidence of this political year says otherwise: the ghosts of South Carolina—the power of going negative and the quandary of how to respond to it; the role of consultants and of surrogate groups; the question of a candidate’s responsibility—just won’t go away.

So I went there, to try to find out what really happened and why. Was it really as bad as accepted wisdom has it? Who did the dirtiest work? How did they get away with it? And how does it relate to the walk in the political gutter that we’ve witnessed the last few months?

As you drive south, the first thing you notice is that the roads aren’t as well paved as farther north and that there are fewer state troopers. Budget cuts have made the odds of getting caught speeding in South Carolina among the lowest in the nation. People there want government to stay out of their pockets, and their lives.

In Columbia, you see the Confederate battle flag flying smack in front of the State House and wonder: Wasn’t that problem resolved?—only to learn that the solution was to take it off the capitol dome and plant it where it was far more visible. I happened to be there on Confederate Memorial Day, and it was like the elephant in the room: not one word about it in the Columbia paper. Government offices were shut, streets emptied, while a few overheated old-timers in gray wool did holiday duty around their flag.

South Carolina is overwhelmingly conservative, and even the taste in barbecue is party-weighted; a poll last year found local Republicans prefer mustard-based sauce by a two-to-one margin over the Democrats’ pick, made with ketchup.

But the real political taste is for blood. South Carolina is where Republican strategist Lee Atwater, the Dark Prince of negative campaigning, spent his childhood and learned his craft, and where he is now buried. There’s barely a political operative in the state who didn’t either work with him or go to school on his tactics. Reviled in much of the nation, he is all but universally revered at home. I was there to find out about dirty politics, I’d say. Over and over, that provoked pride: “You’ve come to the right place!” Politics don’t get any bloodier than the kind Lee Atwater practiced.

On February 2, 2000, John McCain arrived in South Carolina red-hot, a 19-point-upset victor in New Hampshire over George Bush. In the final days there, some of Bush’s aides had pressed him to turn aggressively negative. Bush had resisted. His political guru, Karl Rove, overconfident for too long, had agreed.

Now, in South Carolina, Bush had lost close to a 50-point lead. With just 17 days before the vote, his back was firmly against the wall.