As expected, Sarah Palin was surrounded as soon as she was spotted passing through the gates to the Iowa State Fair. And, as expected, the story line was that she took up much of the attention from the Republican candidates who were also trying to drum up support in advance of the Iowa straw poll.

Palin pressed flesh, petted cows, held children and signed countless autographs, all while answering questions from a rather cowed media scrum. Lots of questions. In fact, she answered so many questions that, according to Politico -- who was actually there and not relying on an anonymous source -- the press kind of fizzled out. Here's what Ben Smith said:

By the time she trudged up a dirt parking lot to the fair's VIP area, only ten or so reporters were left, and we'd run out of questions. She looked up, seeming a bit startled by the silence, and drew a few more.

Nobody asked her about the natural gas pipeline which looks all but dead. Nobody asked her about the current governor's attempt to undo her oil tax policy in Alaska. Both of which were her signature pieces of legislation. No reporter even mentioned her quitting on Alaskans.

And nobody is the wiser about her presidential aspirations. She did say that she would decide in September, and that if she did run, it would be a very unconventional campaign, according to the LA Times:

"Each campaign that I've ever run in these 20 years of elected office has been kind of unconventional, right, Todd?" Palin said, turning to her husband. "I've always been outspent 2:1, 5:1, 10:1. I never won any polls heading into election night but usually won the election."

She said that if she were to run, she wouldn't do things the "traditional" way. "We want new! We want new energy, we want conviction and passion and candidness, even if through that candidates make mistakes," she said.

Leave it to mistake-intolerant Craig Medred to value veracity over conviction. Right before he left for Homer to attend a meeting about federal fishing laws and halibut charters, about the possible death of the town's tourism industry at the hands of halibut-hungry commercial fisherman, I got the following email from him in response:

I'm sure no one polled for the Wasilla mayor's race. Did they poll for the lieutenant governor's race, which she lost? I'm sure they polled for the governor's primary, and if I remember right, she was winning those polls. I'm not sure about the general, but I think she was winning in those too. And they polled for McCain … So let's see. There might be four races for which polling was done on Sarah Palin. She would be polled a loser in two of those, and she would lose. And I believe that in the other, which was really only one race, she was polled the winner and won. So in how many ways is this statement wrong?

To prove his point, he sent this link, which does indicate Sarah Palin was never behind in the general election for governor of Alaska.

One more from Nov. 8, the day after the election:

(Dave) Dittman, the pollster working for Palin, said that his research showed the race closing to within two or three percentage points last week. But then Palin 's lead widened as her ads targeted Knowles as a has-been.