Palin's Wardrobe Saga Exposes McCain's Flaws: Margaret Carlson

At the very moment Palin was celebrating herself as ``your average hockey mom'' in her convention speech, she was wearing a $2,500 silk jacket by Valentino.

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Palin parading around like a Project Runway extra will take far less heat even though the bill she sent the committee makes Paris Hilton look like a Target shopper. With her $1.2 million in assets and six-figure salary, Palin could have footed the bill for whatever extreme makeover she felt was in order.

It's not a victimless crime. That $150,000 comes from funds that a respected incumbent like New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu -- struggling not to be dragged down by the McCain- Palin ticket -- desperately needs.

Earlier it came out that Palin had charged the government for $17,000 in per-diem payments for 300 days she spent in her own house. Now we find she charged the state for trips that resemble vacations if not junkets.

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A stunning 55 percent now think her unqualified to be president. Even as more people find her unsuited to the job, she's enlarging it. She says that as vice president her duties would include being ``in charge of the U.S. Senate.'' The RNC should have spent its money for a tutorial on the Constitution.

In choosing Palin, McCain ignored the old rule to pander to your base in the primary and break their hearts in the general election. Palin was a gift to the already committed. A hunter- gatherer from the last frontier with a large family and knockout good looks, she even turned an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that could have put off evangelicals as an example of lax childrearing or Hollywood ethics into a story of teenagers in love doing the right thing.

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What she does well is hardly enough to compensate for what she does poorly.

In the short run, she made McCain happier than he'd been in months and served to remind people of his maverick side. But in the end his impulsive choice proved more reminiscent of the impetuous young McCain who hated authority, amassed demerits at the Naval Academy and ticked off colleagues as a grandstanding hothead.

The errors we make that hurt the most are the unforced ones. Palin cost McCain his standing with many Republicans and lost him the endorsement of his friend, Colin Powell, the man he called his ``favorite living hero.'' On ``Meet the Press'' last Sunday, Powell said Palin raised doubts about McCain. ``I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president.''

For all the experience 72 years has brought McCain, it hasn't brought him good judgment. We didn't know that before Palin. We know it now.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist.

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