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.

John McCain’s attacks on Barack Obama on national security issues seem to be working: Polls show McCain has cut the Democrat’s lead in half.

According to CNN’s average of several recent national surveys, Obama’s lead is now a slim 3 points over the Arizona senator, 46-43 percent — half of his advantage in a CNN poll of polls one week ago, and down from a high of 8 points in mid-July.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll out Tuesday evening was the latest national survey to indicate Obama’s lead is dwindling, putting the Illinois senator ahead of McCain by only 2 points, well within the poll’s margin of error. The CNN poll of polls also includes new surveys from Quinnipiac and Gallup.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia gave McCain an anvil to hammer away at Obama’s inexperience, CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said.”The McCain campaign believes that some of Hillary Clinton’s tactics, especially questioning whether Obama is ready to lead, can be a real winner,” Schneider said.

His address Wednesday in Orlando, Fla., was to highlight themes GOP hopeful McCain has been using to argue that he is better qualified to be commander in chief than Obama, the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

Bush, in remarks to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, also was expected to address the conflict between Russia and Georgia, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Tuesday.

Addressing both his opponent’s charges of weakness and vacillation, and public doubts about his credibility on military matters, Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that he offered not just tough talk but smart answers to national security questions.

Mr. Obama appeared before the V.F.W. a day after his presumed Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, criticized him for advocating a policy of defeat in Iraq and suggested Mr. Obama put personal ambition before the interests of the country.

Stuck in no man’s land, no longer able to stand before adoring crowds of African-Americans who would welcome him as the “nation’s first black president” with thunderous applause and all kinds of pats on the back, he clearly is having issues dealing with the new world order.

Almost two months after Sen. Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president is still brooding about his wife’s loss. And his chief source of anguish? That supporters of Barack Obama accused him of injecting race into the campaign

.Never mind that the Obama camp — loaded with white male advisers — was so afraid to bring up race that it wasn’t funny.

In the wake of the evangelical Saddleback presidential faith forum and just as the veepstakes heat up for the Republican campaign, 2008 presidential candidate ex-Arkansas governor and Baptist minister with a grin Mike Huckabee turned up for his tenth trip to the Holy Land. The timely invitation came from the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, a rightwing New York foundation that urges Jews to settle in the Muslim quarter of the Old City in “undivided Jerusalem.” Huckabee’s visit here lasted 48 hours, 25 percent longer than Barack Obama’s whirlwind trip last month. Huckabee used the extra time to visit Jewish settlements near the controversial security barrier.

Fresh faced at a power breakfast, despite having had only his usual four hours sleep in a suite at the King David hotel, Huckabee chose to ignore the local English language paper, which had hailed the politician as “Huckabee the Maccabee.” This is an Israeli compliment, as the Maccabees were an ancient Jewish national liberation movement that founded a kingdom that held fast for a century, from 164 - 63 BC.