In the olden days, did they shred documents?

The reason for my curiousity on this matter will become apparent in short order. See, while John McCain is only aware of the internet, his new running mate, Sarah Palin, apparently has a little experience as a hacker. And that experience has apparently come in handy. Her wikipedia page was altered favorably the night before it was announced that she was the Republican VP nominee. And the internet scrubbing continued from there. After all, we wouldn't want people to know that the "anti-corruption" politician was super cozy with Rep. Ted Stevens - you know, the corrupt one. Nor would we want people to know that she supported Obama's energy policy. (How does that work???)

Unfortunately for the apparently internet saavy Palin, for every forty-four year old who knows something about the internet, there is a twenty something year old who knows a hell of a lot more. You can't hide from the true techies. Hence my question. In the olden days, did they just shred documents? And if so, wouldn't politicians be better served by returning to the days when no amount of digging through caches could bring that information back and they could actually hide their dirty deeds and unfortunate statements? Too bad for Palin we're in the information age.