When it comes to Palin’s record, I am more inclined to believe now that McCain isn’t distorting what he knows to be the truth–he simply has no idea what she did when she was governor and so invents a record for her that is consistent with his own obsession with eliminating earmarks.  That is how you get this:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers’ pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.

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When pressed about Palin’s record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said: “Not as governor she didn’t.”

Perhaps McCain was simply referring to one of those “underlying truths” about her record–those are the truths that need not square with the facts. 

This is what happens when a campaign makes opposition to earmarks the measure of political purity, defines the VP nominee as a reformer based almost entirely on her supposed hatred of earmarks and tries to make an anti-earmark crusade a major theme of the election.  Since almost no politician at the state or federal level has entirely “clean” hands when it comes to this sort of spending, there was no way McCain’s VP nominee would have the kind of anti-earmark record that he clearly wants Palin to have, so it had to be invented.  Having scrutinized Palin’s record for all of five seconds, McCain probably had no idea just how mismatched his chosen obsession and his running mate really are.  Maybe he still doesn’t, but we can be sure that he won’t care when he finds out.