This is interesting.
Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times asked, “Senator, can I ask you about Senator Kerry. I just went back and looked at our story, the Times story, and you told Sheryl Stolberg that you had never had a conversation with Kerry about being about vice president...”
McCain testily replied, “Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that. That I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington -- that knows that, there’s no one.”
One of the few media narratives that ever slights McCain is that "he gets angry". It's as silly as the Gore-is-boring or Quayle-is-stupid memes but it's been repeated enough the press tries to hang many things on it.
The Daisy Ad worked once. Perhaps it could work again...