I literally had a ten-day mental block over John McCain’s $5,000 Ferragamos.

It all started when the Republican National Committee was outed for spending $150,000 on Sarah Palin’s makeover. Suddenly I cared about clothing budgets on the campaign trail and started picking up on random facts; Barack Obama wore a $1,500 suit; McCain wore $5,000 shoes; Sarah Palin hired a makeup artist to travel with her for two weeks paying over $22,000. Suddenly I was getting irate at least twice a day at the presidential candidates, thinking how foolish they were to make such huge mistakes during such a tight race. And then I went on the Internet…

Turns out McCain doesn’t wear $5,000 Ferragamos but actually $520 Ferragamos. Phew, I thought. What a waste of angry energy that was. And then I went on the Internet…

And found out that McCain has 13 homes and seven cars and that Palin has a net worth of $1.2 million. I got angry all over again. How dare McCain and Palin campaign on connecting with "Joe the Plumber." And then I picked up the October 27, 2008 issue of The New Yorker...

Only to discover that Palin had entertained several Washington insiders at the Governor’s Mansion in Alaska in 2007. Several of these insiders work for major publications; The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, National Review and The New York Times, or are conservative political pundits with a lot of pull in the Republican party (A-list Washington insiders) like William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Michael Gerson, Rich Lowry, Robert Bork, John Bolton, Victor Davis Hanson and Dick Morris.

After the Washington insiders finished their visits with Palin, most of them were smitten. Here is a list of comments from some of the insiders: “very appealing”; “exceptionally pretty”; “She’s got real star quality”; “fantastic”; “She’s young, energetic”; “She could be both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President”; “my heart-throb”; “a former beauty-pageant contestant, and a real honey, too.”

Here are Palin words’ from her speech at the Republican National Convention:

“Here’s a little news flash, I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion.”

Palin had the political establishment’s “good opinion” long before she got to the podium in 2008. She stood in front of America to promise just how much of an outsider she really was. Just like George W. Bush was a tumbleweed-chasing, brush-clearing cowboy from Midland.

The bummer about you undecided voters is that sometimes it feels like you make decisions based on what people are wearing, because if you would just take the time to learn the facts, it would be easy to make up your mind. I guess that’s what we can expect when some of us are dumb enough to believe that McCain would campaign in $5,000 Ferragamos.