Palin on defensive as scrutiny rises

Spent $150,000 of RNC money for clothing

Sarah Palin, shown at the University of Findlay in Ohio, was pummeled by more controversy yesterday. Besides being hit over clothing expenditures, she is taking some fire over her remark that the job of the vice president is to be ''in charge of'' the Senate. (Madalyn Ruggiero/ Associated Press)

As her qualifications, her understanding of the vice presidency, and even her wardrobe came under renewed scrutiny yesterday, Sarah Palin told a high- profile conservative Christian leader that she isn't discouraged by the Republican ticket's sagging poll numbers because she and running mate John McCain have always been underdogs.

"I know at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4," the GOP vice presidential nominee told James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, in an interview posted yesterday on the group's website.

After a burst of initial enthusiasm for Palin, her image has been tarnished by a series of spotty performances during television interviews and a string of reports about her tenure as Alaska's governor, including a legislative investigation that concluded she improperly sought to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. Yesterday she was pummeled by more controversy.

The website Politico.com reported that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Palin, including $75,063 at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis before the party's national convention, and $49,426 at Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York. Politico also said that its review of financial disclosure reports for Democrat Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee turned up no similar spending.

Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the clothes will be donated to charity after the campaign: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses."

While federal law bans the use of candidate campaign funds for personal use, including clothes, the law has no such restriction on the use of party money for such expenses. And while the money comes from campaign donors, not from taxpayers, the clothing from high-end stores does seem to conflict with Palin's image as a Wal-Mart hockey mom. There was also quite a bit of buzz over Palin's designer rimless eyeglasses, whose popularity exploded.

Palin is also taking some fire for how she described the role of vice president in answering a question from a third-grader.

In the interview with KUSA-TV in Denver, Palin said the vice president is like a "teammate" to the president. "But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes," she added.

While the vice president presides over the Senate and breaks tie votes, the position comes with no official policy-making power. The constitutional role of vice president is to step in if the president dies in office, resigns, is removed, or becomes incapacitated. Palin seemed to describe the position in a similarly expansive way during the vice presidential debate this month. Democrats have criticized Dick Cheney for expanding the power of vice president under President Bush, particularly on energy policy and national security.

But Americans have increasing doubts about whether she is up to the job. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters found that Palin's readiness to be president was their top concern about McCain - ahead of whether he would continue President Bush's policies. Among those surveyed, 55 percent said she is not qualified to serve as president, and 47 percent have a negative opinion of her, up from 27 percent when she was first picked two months ago.

Yesterday, McCain strongly defended Palin when he was asked about the criticism of former secretary of state Colin Powell. Endorsing Obama on Sunday, Powell said of Palin, "I don't believe she is ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president."

In an interview aired on NBC's "Nightly News" last night, McCain retorted: "If General Powell had wanted to meet Governor Palin, we could have arranged that easily, number one. But number two is then obviously General Powell does not know Governor Palin's record."

He went on to list her record as governor, then said that Palin shares his world view and has a son serving in Iraq. "And that's not qualified?" he said, his voice rising. "Tell me what is qualified. I am overjoyed to have a person who's a real reformer. . . . I see all these attacks on Governor Palin. I don't live in a bubble. But those people obviously were either not paying attention to or don't care about the record of the most popular governor in the United States of America."

Palin herself is going to the pages of People magazine to hit back at portrayals of her as something of a dim bulb. While she couldn't name a newspaper or magazine she reads when Katie Couric of CBS asked her, Palin said she has always been a "voracious reader."

"You have to be up on not only current events, but you have to understand the foundation of the issues that you're working on," Palin said in the magazine's issue that hits newsstands tomorrow.

Asked about Tina Fey's impersonation of her on "Saturday Night Live" as somewhat ditzy and "bubble-headed," Palin replied. "That's funny, I play her bubble-headed, too, when I imitate her."

Material from the Associated Press was also used in this report.