John McCain isn’t losing in Arizona — at least, not by the numbers, and not yet. What yesterday’s New York Times piece comes just short of saying, though, is he’s losing in terms of dignity. Some (myself among them) would argue he lost a lot of that claim during the brutal 2008 campaign season, and that perhaps he loses a little more every time his would-be Vice President tours the country, but the Times is remembering a kinder, gentler John McCain, one who had a more centrist (read: thoughtful) position on immigration, one who didn’t smile when someone cracked a joke about Barack Obama’s funny name:

Back in 2008, at a town-hall-style meeting, presidential candidate McCain snatched the microphone away from an older woman who referred to Mr. Obama as “an Arab” and protested: “No, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”

The other day, in front of about 100 people at the Parker Community/Senior Center here in western Arizona, a man who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran said, “I want to know what this guy, what’s his name, let me see, Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama, is doing about our health care.”

Senate candidate McCain’s face flashed with brief amusement, and then he gazed toward the scuffed floor and settled into a grimace. “We all want to be respectful of the president of the United States,” he said.

I don’t really remember McCain’s microphone snatch moment as a day of great heroism for him, since there had been so very, very many town halls before that (and after) where people seemed charged up with a hateful energy that his campaign seemed to create, a campaign where the word “Arab” meant “terrorist.” What I’m curious about is this: why don’t the same people who believe McCain isn’t conservative enough, not anti-immigrant enough, not angry enough, remember those moments of his campaign?

It’s been forty years since a sitting Senator lost a Presidential election and had to turn immediately around to face a campaign for his Senate seat. George McGovern faced a returned prisoner of war as a Republican challenger when he went back to South Dakota, and had to dust himself off from the devastating presidential election loss and start campaigning almost right away. He won, but he had to fight for it. Once you’ve lost on the national stage, that return home is difficult. How difficult? Well, here’s a bit of trivia. Only one other Senator (besides McGovern) has returned to the Senate after his loss in the last 100 years: John Kerry. Before that, you’d have to go back to Lewis Cass, who lost the election of 1848 to Zachary Taylor. Though other Senators have run and lost, none have actually chosen to face re-election; some, like Stephen Douglas, died before their next term, and some, like Barry Goldwater or Bob Dole, resigned to run for president. Goldwater, of course, came back to run again, but he took some time off, first, to shake off that landslide defeat.

What does this mean for McCain? He’s in almost completely uncharted territory here. Neither Goldwater nor Kerry faced any kind of energetic primary challenge, and they certainly didn’t face the prospect of campaigning just to win their party’s nomination up until late August. McCain has to fight J.D. Hayworth all summer long, until the Arizona voters — the same folks who elected the state legislature that just passed SB1070 — get a chance to decide just exactly how right-leaning they want their returning Senator to be.

Then, he’ll have to face a general election candidate. Lucky for him, no one seems likely to beat him — which is good, because after almost three years of non-stop campaigning, John McCain’s gotta be tired.

I don’t buy the New York Times’s unstated theory — that John McCain is in trouble, and that John McCain has changed — but I do think this is a politically interesting race. No, make that — a politically novel race. The prodigal son returns.