News organizations will soon start to produce debate preview stories. Those stories will provide a test of whether the recent flurry of news reports debunking false claims by McCain and Palin were simply a series of stories, or the emergence of a narrative about their truthfulness.

Here's an excerpt from the Associated Press' preview of the presidential debates in 2000: “Gore, who has been staging mock debates under a massive model shark at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, cannot afford self-aggrandizing exaggeration (as in, 'I took the initiative in creating the Internet'), mean attacks or smarty-pants condescension."

Anyone think the AP will write anything similar about McCain and Palin?