Dear oh dear. I’ve annoyed our Attorney General. Well, either me or someone using the same words I used.

See, earlier this week I posted a diary entitled “Someone’s been fluffing Bill Sorrell’s Wikipedia page,” which noted (a) that an unknown person (IP address 24.147.92.129, come on down!) had filled Sorrell’s Wikipedia entry with pro-Bill puffery, and (b) that the entry, and Sorrell himself, are greatly exaggerating his role in the 1997 multi-state tobacco settlement.

So, at his campaign kickoff event on Wednesday, he again touted his role in the settlement — “several times,” according to VTDigger.

Seems a bit sad that a 15-year officeholder has to brag so much about something that happened in his first month on the job, but never mind.

After the jump: reality and revisionism.

In my previous diary, I referenced the history of the tobacco case and noted that, while Sorrell did, in fact, file suit within a month of taking office, he did so “at a time when Attorneys General were jumping on the bandwagon as quickly as they could.”

Now, a passage from the Digger account:

Sorrell’s critics have suggested he jumped on the bandwagon on a suit already in the works, but he denies the claim, calling that charge “revisionist history.”

All righty then. Let’s look at the timeline and see who’s doing the revising.

The first state filed suit in 1994. There was a slow trickle of new filings over the ensuing 20 months or so. Then, Liggett settled with the first four states. That led a bunch of others to file in 1996.

Then, Liggett settled with all the states that had sued since its first settlement. That touched off a land rush of states filing their own cases. Let’s lay it out for all to see.

March 1997: Liggett settles with a total of 20 states.

April 14: Alaska files suit.

April 22: Pennsylvania files.

May 1: Bill Sorrell becomes Vermont AG.

May 5: Montana and Arkansas file.

May 8: Ohio files.

May 9: South Carolina files. A tobacco state, for Pete’s sake.

May 10: Missouri files.

May 21: Nevada files.

May 27: New Mexico files.

May 29: Vermont files.

June 4: New Hampshire files.

June 5: Colorado files.

June 10: Oregon files.

June 12: California files.

June 16: Puerto Rico files.

June 18: Maine and Rhode Island file.

June 20: The tobacco companies and the state attorneys general announce a landmark $368.5 billion settlement. Such a complex deal must have been in the works before Bill Sorrell joined the case. And even if, somehow, dozens of states and the entire tobacco industry miraculously pulled this off in three weeks’ time, is it credible to believe that the brand-new AG of a very small state played an important role in the deal? No, not at all.

Vermont was the 30th state to file suit. It was the 10th in the parade of states that filed shortly after the Liggett deal. “Jumping on the bandwagon” may be an overly playful term for it, but this was clearly something that every attorney general in the country was getting in on.

Filing suit was the right thing to do, and it’s to Sorrell’s credit that he did so almost as soon as he took office. But It took no leadership and no original thought for him to join the parade. He deserves some credit, but he’s claiming a whole lot more than he deserves.

Conclusion: If anyone in this case is a revisionist historian, it’s Bill Sorrell.