Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki held a luncheon for reporters today, followed by a press conference in which he gave a speech that was defiant and yet also sounded a bit like a swan song.

At one point, Maliki even acknowledged, in a roundabout way, that he might not win the election that once seemed his for the taking. The landmark parliamentary election is Sunday, when voters will determine whether to stay the course with Maliki, who's fashioned himself into the centrist candidate. The other two most viable options are a secular, mixed-sect bloc or a mostly Shiite Muslim slate with ties to Iran.

"This could be the last time we meet like this," Maliki told the reporters in the room. Only a couple of Westerners attended, and I was the only woman. The rest represented Iraq's many TV stations and newspapers.

At the lunch before the news conference, journalists sat at banquet tables as sharply dressed waiters served us the grilled Iraqi fish known as mazkouf, trays of lamb, several kinds of rice and honey-soaked pastries from Baghdad's best confectionary. Everyone was hungry, but we were advised not to start until "the host" arrived. Until that moment, nobody had realized Maliki would be dining with us, which is rare for a man whose administration has had a testy and often combative relationship with the media.

Maliki swept into the dining area in a navy suit and tie. He didn't work the room, he didn't greet journalists with anything more than a cursory nod and mumbled "As salamu alaikum," followed by an order for everyone to sit. Aloof and somber, he had a hangdog look about him, and none of the charm of, say, an Ayad Allawi or Ahmad Chalabi.

It was a bit awkward, honestly, to be tucking into a delicious Iraqi meal a table over from the prime minister, who was technically our host but barely acknowledged his guests' presence. I sneaked a few glances at him and found him picking at a small piece of lamb, sipping a Diet Pepsi and trying only a forkful of the rich dessert. He indulged in an after-meal chai and then slipped away to prepare for the press conference.

After lunch, we were shepherded back into the press conference room, where the prime minister's aides passed out interpretation devices for English and Arabic questions and answers.

After a few minutes, Maliki returned and took his place at the podium, Iraqi flags behind him. Maliki may not be the life of a party, but he's become an effective and confident public speaker, deftly swatting away the same old criticisms that came his way again from reporters at the news conference: Sectarianism! Lack of sovereignty! Corruption!

He gave a speech that could be summed up as: "I wasn't perfect, but darn it, I tried my best for Iraq and its people. Along the way I was sabotaged by rivals in parliament, criticized for a Cabinet that was forced on me, forced to fend off "external influences," and still had both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to fight."

Maliki was far more eloquent than that, of course, and even worked in some sly digs at the U.S.-allied Arab nations that love to depict him as an American puppet. (Egypt? Saudi Arabia?)

Listening to him, my mind began to wander back to the days, in 2003 and 2004, when his name was still "Jawad," the pseudonym he used in the opposition to Saddam, and he was a mild-mannered Dawa Party functionary who gave frequent interviews and could be spotted shuffling around the Green Zone with no bodyguards.

At that time, as an Iraqi colleague reminded me today, he was the head of the fledgling Iraqi government's sovereignty committee and once gave a press conference in which he said Iraq had zero sovereignty.

Maliki, like Iraq, has come a long way from those days, and soon we'll find out whether voters believe he's come far enough.