Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- At this point, criticizing Sarah Palin is like beating a dead moose. But who can resist this week's stories of her ``wardrobe of the stars'' spending spree and taxpayer-funded travel?

They're the latest in a stream of revelations that have firmly established Palin as the worst vice presidential choice, if not in history, at least in living memory. In picking her, John McCain lost two vital arguments: experience, because she doesn't have any, and judgment, because he didn't show any.

The latest high heel to drop might look like small potatoes were it not for all the earlier revelations.

In recently filed expenditure reports, we learn that the Republican National Committee revealed spending more than $150,000 at Neiman Marcus and Saks on a campaign makeover for the supposed Wal-Mart Mom.

That's closer to a celebutante than to anything Joe the Plumber -- or Mrs. Joe -- could imagine. Who knew it cost this much to dress like a populist? 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.

Imagine if she were running with the elites instead of against them? For those opening their quarterly pension-fund statements, it's a painful reminder that Republican headquarters will always be Wall Street not Main.

Still, shouldn't a woman catch a break here, having a bigger burden to look good 24/7? Too much attention to vanity is an equal-opportunity destroyer no matter who pays. But for his affair with a staffer, John Edwards would largely be remembered for his $400 haircut. Poor Al Gore never took the bad advice he got to wear earth tones, but he never heard the end of it.

Outdoing Paris

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.

`Official Business'

One trip with her children on ``official business'' coincided with the opening day of her husband's Iron Dog snowmobile race. Another was to a conference in New York lasting five hours for which Palin billed Alaska for airfare and five days in a hotel on Central Park for her and her daughter, Bristol. For airfare alone, Palin charged the state $21,012 for her daughters while in office.

Knowing this would look embarrassing, Palin amended her reports to make it seem as if her family's presence was required. In fact, event organizers were surprised and had to scramble to accommodate her family.

The latest information on Palin adds to the emerging portrait of someone whose carefully cultivated image is at odds with the way she lives. Her brief tenure reveals a self-dealer who fires qualified enemies (Troopergate, her legislative director), hires unqualified friends (naming a former schoolmate who ``likes cows'' head of agriculture), and who went after the good old boys for cutting ethical corners she'd later cut herself.

Reality Bites

McCain may have believed that if he didn't have time to vet her neither would anyone else. But reality caught up.

In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week, voters cited the choice of Palin as their top concern ahead of McCain's continuing President George W. Bush's policies.

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.

Still Transfixed

Even as her negatives rise, the ``real American'' parts of the country are still transfixed. She delivered a boffo red-meat speech with a smile at the convention, then winked and hammed her way through the vice presidential debate. 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. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 23, 2008 00:03 EDT