Republican McCain says he's nervous but looks ahead

FAIRFIELD, Connecticut (Reuters) - Republican front-runner John McCain admitted on Sunday to nervousness about his chances on Super Tuesday, when almost half of the United States votes, but he was also thinking ahead to a general election battle against the Democratic nominee.

Before Republican nominating contests in 21 states on Tuesday, McCain has a sizable lead in many of those states and could emerge as the presumptive Republican nominee.

After an up-and-down year, a superstitious McCain could not help rapping his knuckles on the table in his campaign bus, for good luck.

"I'm very nervous about it because, you know, I've seen this movie before," he told reporters. "My job is to keep our expectation levels down and frankly not raise expectations to a degree that we could suffer some setback."

It has been a long road to the high ground for the Arizona senator, who at 71 would be the oldest person ever elected to a first presidential term.

McCain's political obituary was being written last summer when his campaign ran out of money and he had to dump staff and scale down operations.

Now he is on the cusp of a big comeback. Over the past couple of days he has alternately veered between exuding confidence to grappling with anxiety about whether he can actually pull it off.

"There have been so many ups and downs in this campaign that for us to think that we have a smooth path to the nomination I think would be contradictory to the history of this campaign," he said.

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

McCain's chief rival, Mitt Romney, was not going down without a fight.

The former Massachusetts governor vowed he would not make specific predictions about the numbers of states or delegates he'll win but added: "I'm going to get a lot."

At a party for the Super Bowl football championship in a Missouri sports bar, Romney he took off his shoes and climbed on a table to address a cheering crowd.

"This is a tight race and one which I intend to win," he declared, telling the crowd he and McCain were in a fight for the "heart and soul" of the Republican party.

"He's a fine man, just more liberal on a lot of issues than I am," Romney said of McCain.

A national Washington Post-ABC poll showed McCain leading by a 2-to-1 margin in many of the states that vote on Super Tuesday. In a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, McCain held double-digit leads in New York, New Jersey and Missouri but narrowly trailed Romney in California.

McCain is already thinking ahead to the general election if he beats Romney in the Republican nomination battle and moves on to take on the Democratic nominee.

He said he would begin planning a campaign against either Democrat Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both of whom he has accused of lacking the experience to be president.

He would like his campaign to feature town-hall meetings, the type of events in which he takes questions from voters. He wants these to be open to anyone, not just Republicans -- a subtle rap at President George W. Bush, who often took fawning questions from supporters at his events.

If he takes command in the race on Tuesday, McCain said, he would go ahead with plans to attend a national security conference in Munich, Germany at the end of this week. He might also make a side trip to Iraq.

Reflecting on Republican Bob Dole's 1996 defeat to Democratic President Bill Clinton, McCain said he would avoid Dole's mistake of taking time off after winning the party's nominating battles.

Clinton used the period to frame the case against Dole and went on to an easy victory.

"It's an important time to make sure that you are gaining ground and moving forward and not sitting still," McCain said. "If you're still, you're moving backward."

(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons in Missouri; Editing by Chris Wilson)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/