Dressing Caribou Barbie

(Beware: Snarkiness alert. Those of you with sensitive sensibilities may want to read another article, or go watch Fox News until you feel better.)

As long as so much of the presidential campaign reportage has taken a powder from what’s going on in the real world, I might as well join them in celebrating this silliest part of this silly season.

But first, some history.

In this topsy-turvy world where style triumphs over substance, appearances seem to matter. John Edwards, who touted himself as the champion of the poor while on the campaign trail, didn’t do himself any favors by getting a $200 haircut. Jokes abounded about Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and her “cankles.” And her husband, in a famous incident from his presidency, took Air Force One (at our expense) to California and let it cool its wheels on the tarmac while he got a much more expensive coif from his favorite LA stylist. Barack Obama graced the covers of a couple of well-known style magazines,  looking as debonair as the next James Bond. Joe Biden is a walking advertisement for hair plugs, and I’m almost certain that John McCain has had something that rhymes with “Botox” injected into his forehead. And studies often show that the taller candidate is often the victor, as is the more attractive one.

Now a down-home gal who has been molding her political image as a gosh-darn hockey mom from Main Street Wasilla is getting a lot of attention – not all of it good -- for a certain $150,000 item on the RNC’s budget last month – an entire wardrobe from a whole host of up-market stores like Neiman Marcus and Barney’s.

One could argue that since, like it or not, she’s been thrust onto the national stage, she should be dressing the part. But when you’re making your trademark (or it’s being made for you) as someone who understands the plight of Joe and Jane Sixpack because she’s one of them, maybe she should have taken her shopping a little more downscale. Yes, the campaign says that after the election most of the clothing will be given to charity. But does that really make it any better? And as governor of Alaska, don’t they pay her well enough to afford a decent wardrobe? She has enough money to own seven pairs of those $700 glasses, and from the tax returns that she and Todd released, they are not exactly eating Ramen noodles and shopping at the Goodwill. And she certainly, as Governor, had enough money to take her kids on round-trip commercial flights (to events where they were not invited) and put them up in the swankiest hotel rooms, without needing to charge their expenses to the state.

Maybe this wardrobe malfunction is really a diversionary ploy. I remember an old episode of “The Partridge Family,” where Shirley was being pushed into letting a horribly bad singer perform with the band. This chick could set all the dogs in the neighborhood to howling, but she was gorgeous. So what they decided to do was dress her in a pair of hot pants and stick her up on the stage anyway, figuring that the mostly male audience would be so taken with her hot bod that they wouldn’t care if she could sing a lick. Maybe that’s what Steven Schmidt and Rick Davis are doing with their very own life-size Barbie doll. Give her a smart wardrobe, and maybe nobody will notice what’s coming out of her mouth. Or what’s coming out of her past.