The McCain campaign will, I imagine, come to sorely regret not vetting Palin. When a politician comes out of a truly corrupt system, a reputation as a "reformer" isn't the same as a clean record. Reformers, in general, are somewhat less corrupt then the machine they're fighting, and they're enemies of the most entrenched elements of the existing system. But they're not radicals, and they're not ascetics. They played by some of the rules. If they'd simply rejected the whole rotted infrastructure, the system would have purged them early, and they'd never have been powerful enough to confront anyone at all. Palin did not reject the system. Alaska is a pork-based economy. So when she was mayor of Wasilla, a town of 6,700 people, she employed Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, a powerful lobbying firm, to push Congress into appropriating almost $27 million in earmarks for her town. That's about $4,000 per person. When the $250 million Bridge to Nowhere was a possibility, she advocated for it. When Ted Stevens was the state's most powerful politician, she attached herself to him, directing his 527 group. Which is not say she doesn't have some reformist credentials: She does. But in a state as corrupt as Alaska, that's not the same as saying she's clean.
