In the category of more unsolicited advice they didn't ask for, are tired of getting, and will certainly ignore, I'll holler one more pitch from my armchair to the McCain campaign (I'm a political consultant, I can't help it).

There is no state by state way to break out of the campaign's current spiral. Trips to Iowa will not do it. McCain has to go global with a big closing message. So, why not...

Strip down the state by state media budget and use the money to follow Obama's lead with a prime-time 30 minute TV address? McCain direct to camera. And for God's sake don't make it another raging attack on Obama. Instead offer a mini mea culpa for the negative tone of the last three months. Then pitch the strong bipartisan sheriff of Washington argument. A non-tax and spend liberal plan to fix economy. Offer hope and leadership.

Follow this broadcast up with two more 30 minute prime-time shows over the final week; both should be town halls with McCain in the arena facing real voters asking him very tough questions, not softballs from local GOP plants. After the 30 minutes in prime-time, let each town hall show continue for another half hour live on the internet so interested viewers can watch even more and make a web donation to the RNC. Cut the schedule down -- sorry Waterloo, IA -- to give McCain significant time to really prepare for each show. And spend big bucks to bring in top Hollywood pros and first rate production values. Risky yes, but a big message move aimed at the entire country is the best option now.

Republicans are hoping that the revelations about Sarah Palin's big shopping spree will be a minor sensation that will fade after a news cycle or two. I don't think so. This one will stick, and it should.

Palin is not the only politician to find herself in this spot during this election season--or to learn the hard way how these narratives can resonate. John Edwards had trouble getting his antipoverty message across when the media was obsessing on his house and his haircuts. Senator Gordon Smith might be having an easier time in his re-election race in Oregon had he not fancied a set of vintage golf clubs enough to pay $1.25 million for them.

And it is worth mentioning that there is a double standard at work for a woman candidate. Her clothes have to look nice and fit well; every hair must be in place. At one point when I was traveling on the Hillary Clinton campaign, the photographers covering her discerned that she was putting her pantsuits in a rotation, and posted a calendar at the back of the plane predicting which one she would wear on any given day. The candidate herself spied it and burst out laughing when she realized that, yes, she was wearing exactly the one they had expected. That would never have happened to a man. Who notices whether he has on the navy suit with the pinstripes, or the one without?

But Palin's spree through Neiman Marcus and Barney's doesn't exactly square with the image she has been trying to sell us of the everywoman hockeymom who sold the state's airplane and fired the Governor's mansion chef. The GOP base loves Palin, and may rally behind her once again. But the news couldn't have come at a worse time for the McCain campaign, in a week when the campaign itself has been trying to divide the country between the "real" America and everyone else. The contrast between Palin's extravagance and the decisions that many American families are having to make in this scary economic time could hardly be starker. When you are introducing yourself to an entire nation, it helps to remember that authenticity is not just a matter of style.

UPDATE: My snarky friend Tammy Jones (a Project Runway addict well known to followers of our debate liveblog) writes:

So she can dress a moose, but not herself? You'd think Caribou Barbie would be making her own wolf-pelt blazers or something. And nice loyalty, as a governor, to shovel $150K into Minnesota's economy instead of her own. Isn't there a Nordstrom's of Nome??

Sure, they're giving all the clothes to charity. What about the hairstylist, though? Is there a Highlights for the Homeless program out there?

While everyone today is clucking over the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe, this report could prove at least as troublesome, because it involves the use of taxpayer money, not political contributions:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) _ Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor's children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.

As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor's schedule.

But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.

Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.

"She said any event she can take her kids to is an event she tries to attend," said Jennifer McCarthy, who helped organize the June 2007 Family Day Celebration picnic in Ketchikan that Piper attended with her parents.

• "This one, also from the NRA, but against Obama, is even better! It's about how Obama will allow people to break into your home and stab your children and then make YOU the criminal when you shoot the intruder." [Radar]

• Are you there, Barack? It's me, Judy. [YA for Obama]

• Where, if not how, to vote. [Google]

• "If Palin's wardrobe were a family of four, they'd get a kick-butt tax cut from the Obama campaign...." [Ambinder]

• Obama winning with Catholics, Protestants, blacks, narrowing among Evangelicals. [Pew]

• "I don't know if I agree that undivided government is a bad thing (it gave us the Civil Rights Act, among other things), but I do see the utility of using it to scare people. Or trying to. But uhm, Harry Reid? Scary? His voice lulls small children to sleep." [WP]

Such was the subject of a McCain campaign conference call today featuring senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and former CIA director Jim Woolsey. The stated purpose of the call was to discuss a Washington Post story this morning which, in a "rather irresponsible and quite outrageous fashion," said campaign aide Michael Goldfarb, "tried to claim" that Al Qaeda might actually prefer John McCain over Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential election. Scheunemann complained that the story cites just one post on the Al Qaeda-linked website calling for McCain's victory, and yet the Post decided that was enough to run a story implying that jihadists support McCain's election. What about the spokesman for Hamas, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, Scheunemann complained, all of whom, to varying degrees, have stated their preference for Obama over McCain? "The Washington Post did not find time to write about that," Scheunemann fumed.

In other words, the call had two purporses: first, complain about what was, in their view, a poorly reported news article that left the "outrageous" impression that some of the world's worst people support McCain; and second, to promulgate the impression that, in fact, it is Barack Obama who is supported by terrorists. As Scheunemann said, "If we're going to talk about who has support from terrorist groups..."

What Woolsey and Scheunemann made clear, however, is that they didn't have any problem with linking an American presidential candidate to support from terrorists. Their problem was merely that the Post article was making the link to the wrong guy.

Addendum: when Andrea Mitchell of NBC asked about polls showing that voters are concerned about Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications, Goldfarb cut Scheunemann off before he could answer and Scheunemann chided Mitchell for not asking about the call's stated topic of discussion. (Update: I heard wrong; according to Goldfarb, it wasn't he but Scheunemann who responded to Mitchell directly.)

I saw the RNC statement on Gov. Palin’s $150,000 clothing bender on the RNC's tab. This caper is gonna make for a long day at the office for the good folks at the RNC/McCain press operation. Thought I’d offer a little help in a humorous vein; some other possible spin lines for the RNC.

1.) What you sneering critics in the liberal MSM fail to see here is… a Jobs Program! Saks floorwalkers, cashiers, a team of sweating porters to haul the merchandise from the store to the motorcade… chiropractors to treat those porters. Sarah Palin knows how to create jobs!

2.) What’s the difference between a Pit Bull and a Hockey Mom? You can feed a pit-bull for 483 years with 150 grand.

3.) Still cheaper than Mitt Romney’s hair products. We’re saving money here…

4.) William Ayres is a terrorist!

5.) New ad slogan: “Clothes for Gov. Palin? $150,000. Time machine to go back two months to late August and ask what the Hell were Schmidt and Davis thinking when they cooked up this idea and sold it to McCain? Priceless.”

But the only one you'll have time to read for now.

From Robert Draper's 8000-word story on the (Re)(Re)(Re) Making of John McCain:

“We had a narrative problem,” Matt McDonald recalls. “Obama had a story line: ‘Bush is the problem. I’m not going to be Bush, and McCain will be.’ Our story line, I argued, had to be that it’s not about Bush — it’s Congress, it’s Washington. And Obama would be more about partisanship, while John McCain would buck the party line and bring people together.”

The others could see McDonald’s line of reasoning — and above all, the need to separate McCain from Bush. But the message seemed antiseptic, impersonal. That was when the keeper of McCain’s biography, Mark Salter, took the floor. There’s a reason McCain bucks his party, McDonald remembers Salter arguing. It’s because he puts his country ahead of party. Then the speechwriter, who is not known for his dispassion, began to yell: “We’re talking about someone who was willing to die before losing his honor! He would die!”

I admit I was among those who were initially a bit skeptical about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. How much, I wondered, did it have to do with the damage done to Powell's own reputation caused by his service as George W. Bush's secretary of state? And why, I wondered, did Powell wait until 16 days before the election, with Obama already up in the polls and looking like a winner?

But then I watched Powell and listened to what he said. HIs indictment of his own party's political tactics was more than powerful; it was convincingly sincere. His timing, it turned out, make perfect political sense. And, as Maureen Dowd wrote this morning, Powell's finest moment was when he told Tom Brokaw that what really bothered him about the sinister rumors labeling Obama a secert Muslim wasn't that they were a lie; it was the suggestion that there was something un-American about being a Muslim.

Of course, conservatives never really trusted Powell. And now their suspicions have proved valid. And it's not just because he endorsed a Democrat for president. Worse still, he reads the New Yorker.