At first glance, many will be shocked by the $150,000 price tag for Palin and her family’s wardrobe but when you get down to the circumstances of the situation, the money spent is actually reasonable. In all honesty, $150,000 for a wardrobe is likely on the low end of what most politicians in Washington already have. You may not believe me but consider this: we’re talking custom tailored suits, high-end business attire, professional cleaning services, and enough variety to convince even the most observant fasion expert that they have no shortage in good taste.

Sarah Palin like many Americans is not “rich” and hasn’t spent her entire life having to make public appearances. While her Governor’s job might’ve required her to wear business formal attire, chances are she was not on state-wide much less, national television on a daily basis so the quality and variety of her wardrobe was not as important. This also means that she could afford her own clothes on a modest budget allthough a likely higher clothing budget than people not in a Governor’s office.

Then there’s the price of the clothes. It may sound trivial but I doubt it’s a good idea for a politician to be wearing something that many people will say: “hey, I have that suit… I bought it at Wal-Mart.” In a politician’s case, a one size fits all suit from Wal-Mart simply won’t do. They need a custom tailored and high quality clothing in order to make themselves presentable to THE ENTIRE WORLD. Off the top of my head, the last time I bought a custom tailored suit was for my wedding and it set me back about $2000… but boy do I look like I was going to kick ass and take names when I wore that suit! My every day suit on the other hand was bought at Wal-Mart but when I’m doing job interviews… I opt for the custom tailored suit.

In fact, a “job interview” is a good analogy because that is exactly what Palin is doing every time she appears in public. But since she’s interviewing for the same job and the people interviewing her (the American Voters) are the same each time, it simply wouldn’t do to show up for every interview wearing the same thing even if the clothes do make her look like a million bucks. So in addition to the high cost of just one high quality outfit, we see the need to have multiple outfits and possibly even one outfit for each and every appearance!

For men, it’s easy to just throw on the same suit but all you need to do is ask a woman if it’s a good idea for them to show up at a party wearing the same thing they wore to the last party…. or the party before that, or before that, ect. Believe it or not, women keep track of this stuff and so will female voters when they see Palin! I suspect some men would notice it too but only if she wore the same thing ten or twenty times and I think that we men really have no idea what women go through in order to ‘keep up appearances’ nor how important such things are to them. Those of us that have wives might’ve noticed this ’strange’ phenomenon at some point.

We also haven’t even talked about accessorizing! For men, “dressing up” is always involves nearly the same formula. You have a jacket, a tie, a button down shirt, and pants. Shoes are usually black or brown depending on the color of your belt, also black or brown. We also have no need for ‘makeup’ much less, matching ‘makeup tones’ and as far as hair is concerned, making sure we don’t look like we just rolled out of bed is usually enough. If you’re extra fancy, you wear cufflinks and/or a nice watch. For men, dressing up is very simple.

Women on the other hand, have a variety of differen’t tops, bottoms, shoes, jewelery, makeup, hairstyles, and handbags/purses that go into making the perfect outfit. Add this to the cost of custom tailored clothing and the money involved just keeps adding up. I wouldn’t even be suprised if some of the $150,000 was spent hiring consultants to figure all this stuff out! Afterall, Palin is way too busy to be troubling herself with this kind of thing!

So we’ve covered Palin and her need for lots of new clothes that fit well and make her look fantastic but what of the rest of her family? Afterall, if her kids are ‘normal’ for a middle class family, they likely have one or two nice ‘outfits’ for wearing to church or similar ‘formal’ occasions. As the news reports are saying, the money helped buy her family, also making occasional public appearances, the clothes that they needed in order to look presentable. We can see where this is going and we can start to get an idea, facing reality, that these shopping sprees aren’t cheap. I hope we can also see that given the circumstances, this expendature for the McCain campaign was actually a wise one and there is no doubt in my mind, that Palin being able to look good on TV is will worth the investment because the pay off will be more votes for the Republican Ticket.

(2 Ratings)

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