One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband.

This is great inside baseball stuff from the campaign, though there’s really no reason for McCain campaign officials to reveal it other than to completely discredit Palin. Apparently, she sees it that way, too.

A Palin aide said: “Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin.”

Is this a 2012 pre-emptive strike from within the Republican party?

Overall, it was very, very nicely done. It succeeded at every level in conveying both an urgency to solve the pressing problems of the day and a calm in the man who’s asked to lead those solutions.

I was concerned by two items. The first was the statement that anyone making less than $200,000 will get a tax cut. Unless I misunderstand the numbers, this seems to be a change from the “over $250,000″ tax cut rollback.

The other item was the statement that Obama will “increase domestic oil production.” (I hope that’s an accurate quote - I don’t have the video running.) In any event, I was struck that the statement seemed to be a complete capitulation to McCain’s plan to increase domestic drilling.

If I understand either of these correctly, they could easily be fodder for the McCain campaign for the next six days. And, frankly, they’d represent a slightly bothersome shift by Obama in the last week of the campaign.

Short of those items, the ad was, honestly, brilliant. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could come away from it with any further belief in the McCain-Palin “radical secret Muslim terrorist black man” narrative. The timing was great and the content was spot-on - as we’ve come to expect from this remarkable campaign.

The peril of the modern political campaign is not its nastiness (come on, we’re all adults). It’s that it supplants a real debate, so that by the time the election actually happens and a victor is declared, it’s not entirely clear what we all collectively just decided. Did we just vote for universal health care, or against that cranky old man and his dimwitted running mate?

I’m confident that in this election, I’ll vote for the policies of my candidate and party, but that’s been a rare occasion since I started voting in 1980. All too often, the vote’s been cast against the policies or personality of the opposing candidate. As Josh points out, that just leaves a muddled taste on the palate post-election.

- Sarah Palin, 10/17/08, on her upcoming appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

First, voter fraud occurs when faked or otherwise ineligible votes are actually cast, or when eligible votes aren’t counted. It’s simply wrong to call the registration of ineligible or fictitious voters “voter fraud.” Call it “registration fraud” if you will, but there’s a wide gulf between the two in terms of the impact on the election. Fictitious voters still need to show up at the polls, get past the registration table and somehow cast a ballot to commit voter fraud. Is registration fraud acceptable? Of course not. But, until and unless the fraud results in an actual ballot being cast (unlikely in most states), it has virtually no impact on the election.

Then there’s the threadbare assertion by McCain that “America needs to be fully informed” on the issue of William Ayers. If McCain or America are uncertain of Obama’s relationship to William Ayers, they haven’t been paying attention. The Obama campaign has explained the relationship in a consistent fashion for at least several months.

But, that’s not really the point, is it? McCain’s playing a game with this “relationship.” The game goes like this.

“I understand you ran a stoplight at the corner of Main and Cedar last week. Tell me about that,” I say.

“I didn’t run a red light,” you respond.

“Why won’t you disclose what happened at Main and Cedar last week?” I press.

“I am. I didn’t run a red light.”

“It’s not so much about whether you ran a stupid red light,” I continue. “It’s about your inability to level with us. It’s about your honesty. It’s about your judgment in what you choose to tell people.”

In other words, there’s no correct answer. It’s an old, old political game of forcing your opponent to prove a negative.

Unfortunately, Obama will probably need to spend yet more time answering the question in the next three weeks - maybe tonight, as a matter of fact. Hopefully, he’ll answer concisely then ask why McCain continues to avoid providing a real plan for the American people.

In some ways, that talk reflected the difficult relationship we’ve had with him since he became a national political figure.

About 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, former Sen. Edwards reached me on my office phone.

Earlier that day, while campaigning in South Carolina, Edwards denied a report in The National Enquirer that he had an affair with an unnamed woman who once worked in his campaign.

In the newsroom, we debated whether to run Edwards’ comments about the Enquirer story in the next day’s print edition.

But it would be great to have two top people on the ticket.But Gore has already been vice president! Two people have served as vice president under two different presidents: George Clinton served as vice president under Jefferson and Madison, and John C. Calhoun served under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson

It could have been added that Clark had several appointments that required Senate approval. McCain never did. Clark was approved by a voice vote of the Republican-controlled Senate to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe. John McCain was part of that Republican-controlled Senate.

But, the selection of Wesley Clark as Barack Obama’s VP running mate will have another consequence that the McCain camp could not survive.

Inevitably, inexorably, indubitably the military records of these two men will be opened, examined, sliced and diced and compared by the press. Enormous pressure will build on McCain to sign a release form that allows access to all his military records, a step he has never taken.

Despite a recent CBS poll saying a majority of voters would like to see Clinton in the vice presidential slot, she’s smart enough to know it wouldn’t be the right move for her - and therefore won’t push it. The two are philosophically complete opposites and would find it hard to work together. There’s also no faster way to shut someone down than to make them a vice president, where they are prevented from overshadowing or bad-mouthing their boss. Clinton would want the independence to criticize Obama and even outshine him, should the opportunity arise.

Politically, it would also not make the most effective ticket. The public senses the tension between them and will consider them insincere whenever they praise one another.