Who in the McCain campaign got paid $22,800 for 2 weeks of work?

Sarah Palin's makeup artist.

That's from the NYT "Caucus" blog, where the first commenter notes the URL: "pains-makeup-stylist-fetches-highest-salary-in-2-week-period." Pain.

Let me add that I do not have a problem with paying a lot for the makeup job. It's extremely important. Remember how great Hillary Clinton always looked during the primaries. That didn't just happen. And bad makeup can screw up even a male candidate's campaign. Let's not forget the rouge that cost Al Gore the presidency:

This election always has been about one thing, and it was thoughtfully touched on by Kriss Soterion, the former Miss New Hampshire and owner-operator of Kriss Cosmetics & the Studio of Holistic Beauty in Manchester, N.H. Kriss, you may recall, was invited to do the vice president's makeup for the first Gore; Bush game. Before the debate, the local papers were running endless profiles of the hometown gal on the eve of her big break. After the debate, she entered the witness protection program. The pancake she smeared on Gore's cheeks, on top of his overly worked-out, 23-inch neck, on top of his lumpy suit, combined to make him look like Herman Munster doing a bad Ronald Reagan impression.

Poor old Kriss would like to make up for her makeup, but she fears she'll never get another chance, and now seems to be going through some existential crisis, riddled with self-doubt and questioning her calling. She told the New Hampshire Sunday News that her catastrophic touchup of Al has caused her to "think deeply" about "the psychology of makeup." "It just makes me think about the whole thing, about wearing masks," she said. "It's kind of a fascinating subject, to analyze why we hide behind it in the first place."

This is not a subject the vice president wants to discuss at this stage in the election cycle, but Kriss has a point. For the second presidential faceoff, Al was appearing without his face on -- not just the foundation and rouge, but in a broader sense: The mouth wasn't merely in non-sighing mode, it was zipped up and hung slack; the eyes seemed dead. The only remnants of last week's Gore were the eyebrows (N.B., Kriss: nice pencil liner) imperiously arched with the amused contempt of an overthrown king sitting through his own show trial. On Wednesday night, the vice president had the look of a man who'd run out of masks. After the expansive array of dazzling new Gores of the last year, the vice president apparently opened his closet and found that his housekeeper had sent all his identities to the cleaners.

Ha ha. That's Mark Steyn, writing in 2001. You do not want to lose the election over makeup.