From the Department of Visual Studies: If your life is colorful, your clothing need not be. This was the message conveyed by Sarah Palin and her family last night. By now, the salient, fascinating biographical details are familiar: working mother; five kids; pregnant 17-year-old; baby with Down Syndrome; revenge allegedly taken, mafia-style, on a deadbeat ex-brother in law. “Our family,” Palin said, addressing the chaos swirling around her with a disarming smile, “has the same ups and downs as any other.” And indeed, the Palins looked like any American family, clad in nondescript clothing in beige and black and various shades of Banana Republic grey. Has any planner of political conventions ever stopped to think that few Americans actually dress in blinding, acid-bright, “telegenic” colors? The teals and hot pinks of the Democratic National Convention would not fly at the factory, or on the fishing boat, or--let’s say--in the small town mayor’s office.

Palin, understated and neutral in dress if not in mien, brought with her a palpable atmosphere of folksy authenticity. This is what Barack Obama lacks, and Hillary Clinton strained for, and George W. Bush possesses in spades. Yet Palin did not have to light out for the territory to stage her realness, à la the Bushes; hers seems intrinsic and, well, authentic--what with her son Track shipping off to Iraq (and rumored to have some trouble for vandalism in his past); and her fisherman-union-member-snowmobiling-champion-high-school sweetheart husband Todd an erstwhile secessionist.

As Eve Fairbanks noted last night, the Palins appear to be the sort of “real person” politicians invoke to personalize mundane policy points in their speeches. Palin aimed her own populist speech at this constituency, at blue-collar Americans--the ones Hillary nabbed, and who, we are told, continue to view Barack Obama with suspicion, as the political equivalent of caviar. I am one of you, Palin emphasized, as she derided Obama for his elitism, his memoirs, and for his effete campaign of “personal discovery.” There seemed to have been no attempt to gussy Palin up, to make her more this or less that, to pretend that she was anything other than what she was. Remarkably, for that hour at least, the political image-making apparatus seemed refreshingly suspended. (A notion reinforced when the youngest Palin daughter, Willow, was caught licking her palm on camera, then hilariously using the saliva to flatten her baby brother’s fuzzy hair.) You might say that the natural look, in the literal and metaphorical senses, seemed to work for Palin: Here I am, she projected without a hint of calculated self-consciousness, pregnant teenager daughter and all.

The McCain clan, however, all of them a bit on the older side, resorted to the standard sartorial contrivances. Cindy McCain, still aggressively tanned and dyed and frosted, did look softer than usual; she had finally unleashed her hair, and someone has recently given her a fringe of bangs. The attire of all the McCains fell in the usual political spectrum: peppermint pink (mother), Kelly green (Cindy), flaming orange tie (the candidate himself). But color, of course, is nothing more than adornment. It is surface, the substance of convention stagecraft. (Speaking of which, what was that odd slideshow backdrop of American landmarks, from Mount Rushmore to the St. Louis Arch?) To slap a bright hue on an aging candidate is like cutting the mold off the edges of a loaf of bread. (Or, if you prefer a different metaphor, putting some lipstick on a pit bull.) Indeed, standing next to Sarah Palin--vibrant, full of life--after her well-delivered speech, McCain looked all of his 72 years. One was reminded that this unknown, rather untested woman may well end up president, and soon. For the Democratic commentators opining post-speech on the cable news shows, this was a terrifying thought; for the GOP audience, it seemed an electrifying one. How Palin’s au natural candidacy will play out remains to be seen. In the meantime, to avoid the bloom of youth throwing into relief the sallowness of experience, the Republican event planners might do well tonight to disperse the maverick soul mates to opposite ends of the stage.

--Amanda Fortini