McCain’s got an amazing sense of positioning. I am not talking of the web site and Straight Talk Express, but in day-to-day communication that makes him come across as very human and in touch with people’s needs. He can be serious and funny at the same time.

Funny: For those who wonder about his age, he comes across as someone perfectly capable of taking down his critics. Watch him “take down” David Letterman. Sure it’s scripted, but well done. Watch this. Last year he did an impressive block-and-bridge maneuver on the age thing as well.

Serious: Then there are statements like this in a bid to simplify the tax code: fully aware of people needing not just tax breaks but relief from the “thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS.”

Off the cuff. If the above sounds a prepared statement, consider what he says when he’s unplugged — when he looked back at his high school years calling himself a “pretty rambunctious boy with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder.” Most handlers polishing up his talking points would have deleted the last 10 words.

So while Clinton and Obama demolish each other over semantics and borrowed or misplaced rhetoric, McCain’s “rhetoric” is to simply say things as is.