Sarah Churchwell: Who's 'ordinary' in these clothes?

As Andy Warhol almost said, politics is what you can get away with. The story of Sarah Palin's $150,000 makeover is showing the limits – admittedly high – of America's tolerance for hypocrisy. You should be careful where you start a witch hunt – villagers have a pesky way of turning on you, and checking whether you can float.

Of course Palin floats just fine, skimming across the surface of every issue. Which is surely why the wardrobe story has resonated; it shows not only the increasing superficiality of American politics, but also Palin's increasing superficiality. Or rather, it reveals a superficiality that seems more profound every day. Although some have argued that the election is a momentous job interview and Palin must dress the part, and others have dismissed the story as a trivial distraction, it symbolises the escalating concerns about honesty and hypocrisy surrounding Palin's candidacy.

The Republicans say they always intended to donate the clothes to charity, so they aren't misusing public funds. Now the Washington Post reports that last month alone the McCain-Palin ticket paid $13,200 to a TV make-up artist; how do you suppose they'll give back the make-up? Since they sell themselves as reformers, their probity – and priorities – are fair game. Once upon a time mavericks were unbranded cattle; how things change. Moreover, Palin is personally wealthy, with a six-figure salary from the Alaskan taxpayer, and a reported $1.5min personal assets. Why not buy the clothes herself, instead of charging the taxpayer yet again?

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Most important, however, is the way the story contradicts her self-proclaimed identity as woman of the people, hockey mom, lipsticked pitbull, friend to Ordinary Joes (Sixpack and Plumber), and scourge of the liberal elite. Although there is one way at least in which Palin is being entirely consistent: clearly this is a woman who loves labels.

It feels like poetic justice because Palin has so busily fomented a crude politics of identification, arguing that she is qualified to the (second) highest office in America simply by virtue of being ordinary. (And I thought that ordinariness was a disqualification for becoming President.) She took this tactic to such an extreme that a few days ago she implied that only her supporters come from "real America," which so outraged those of us who come from unreal America that she was forced to issue an apology.

I'm afraid culture warriors don't get to wear couture. When Katie Couric pressed Palin about why she only got a passport in 2006, her answer was class resentment: "I'm not one of those who maybe come from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduated college and their parents get them a passport and a backpack and say, 'Go off and travel the world.' Noooo. I worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life, until I had kids... I was not part of, I guess, that culture."

Well, I guess she's part of that culture now. In her acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, Palin congratulated herself for not being part of the "permanent political establishment", the "Washington elite." These words may prove all too prophetic; ironically the $150,000 wardrobe, in making Palin more closely resemble the Washington elite her followers despise, may help ensure that her stay in the political establishment is as temporary as those of us from the imaginary parts of America could wish.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia