I am often struck by the linguistic patterns of the beginning of the Bush administration. Where there would be a single sentence that could be interpreted as reasonable followed by hundreds of outrageous claims and accusations. If someone ever called them on the outrageous stuff, they would just point to the one thing they said that was reasonable on on the same date and then say, "next question!" McCain is perfect in this mold, everyone remembers when he said something that sounded reasonable and forgets all this other stuff, or writes it off as an anomaly. In fact, the anomalous part is anything reasonable.