Every so often a politician is quoted as saying something so surprising that it can stop you in your tracks.

Sen. John McCain (AP Photo/Matt York)

Washington Wire had one of those moments today when we read the latest issue of Newsweek, which quotes Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain distancing himself from his well-established and long-nurtured national persona.

“I never considered myself a maverick,” he told Newsweek. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

The statement is stunning on many levels, not least of which because the maverick persona was hammered by the McCain-Palin ticket in the 2008 campaign and long-cultivated by the senator and his supporters years before his presidential bid.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apparently didn’t get the maverick memo when she campaigned as recently as March 26 for McCain’s Senate re-election bid. “Send the maverick back to the United States Senate,” Palin declared.

Washington Wire took a quick stroll down memory lane for some of McCain’s greatest maverick hits, below. And we wonder: If McCain is no longer the maverick, what should he be known as?

–Palin did her part in pushing the maverick line in the 2008 campaign, where she regularly referred to both her and McCain as mavericks. “Now John McCain, with a track record of proving he’s not just a patriot in the Senate, he’s known as the maverick,” she said during a Nov. 2008 campaign stop in Ocala, Fla.

–In the lone vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden, Palin said the word “maverick” no fewer than 15 times…