Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a “serious” candidate.

She’s about substance, not style. And to suggest otherwise, she will tell you, is unfair.

So, surely, there is some good explanation for the report that the Republican vice presidential candidate’s stylist is being paid more than her foreign-policy adviser.

Amy Strozzi, a top celebrity stylist who has worked with the reality show “So You Think You Can Dance,” began traveling with Palin in September. According to the McCain-Palin campaign’s latest financial report, Strozzi has collected $22,800.

The McCain-Palin campaign’s foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who was called in to brief Palin before her various interviews with television news anchors and for the vice presidential debate, was paid $12,500 during the same reporting period.

The McCain camp suggests that some of Strozzi’s money is back-pay for earlier work. But she is certainly holding her own against the campaign’s top foreign-policy guy.

And perhaps rightly so.

The campaign’s “I-can-see-Russia-from-my-house” strategy for establishing Palin’s foreign-policy credentials has not been nearly so successful as her $150,000 makeover.