WEST PALM BEACH, Florida - John McCain came back from the political graveyard to become the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee largely on the back of a bare-bones campaign.

But a lower number of staff can sometimes have consequences. Like on Wednesday when the candidate and his staff left for the airport without their traveling press corps.

Directly after a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., reporters dashed outside to their bus to move on.

But no one from the campaign was with them, unusually, and the go-ahead to leave for the airport never came. 

So they waited. And waited. Nearly an hour later a phone call between a reporter and a McCain staff member revealed the mix-up, and the bus driver hightailed it to the airport, where McCain had also been waiting — on the plane.

“I want to again comment on the well-oiled machine we have on this campaign,” the Arizona senator later told reporters during the flight to Florida.

“So I sat waiting here for you and then someone became curious as to your whereabouts and — lo and behold — we discovered that … this machine we have still needs to be tweaked to some degree.” 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder - John McCain on his campaign plane on March 4.