"If you asked 100 reporters what one word they would use to describe John McCain," writes Paul Waldman, "99 would probably answer, 'maverick.' Indeed, they've become so used to attaching 'maverick' to McCain that it has become almost a part of his name; 'the maverick John McCain' is used in the same way we refer to 'Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega' or 'teen sensation Hannah Montana.' A Lexis-Nexis search reveals that in the month of January alone, McCain was referred to in the media as a 'maverick' more than 800 times." And so Paul asks the relevant question: How did John McCain become a maverick? After all, he's not nearly the most heterodox Senator in his caucus. He votes with his party 84 percent of the time and, according to the broadly respected Poole-Rosenthal Index, was the eighth most conservative Senator in the 110th Congress. There are plenty of actual centrists and moderates who hang out in the middle far more often tham McCain does. What McCain has figured out is how to make his moments of heterodoxy dramatic, and how to enlist the press in that effort:
