Rick Santorum sweater vest: 'What not to wear' or sleeveless genius?

It’s not often that a political candidate’s fashion choices take on a life of their own – they are after all, supposed to be  plugging more, well, substantial stuff. But, the weekend before the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, the sleeveless sweater vest that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum put on the map has become a hot Internet and retail item, with sellers from Amazon to Joseph Banks experiencing a rush in customer demand. 

The mania picked up after a video called “Sleeves Slow Me Down” went viral over the weekend. That came after the vest acquired a Twitter feed of its own, @FearRicksVest, and a Tumblr under the same name. The obsession with the sartorial choices of the second-place winner in the Iowa caucus is not surprising, say political analysts and fashion watchers.

“We talk about fashion when we’ve run out of  actual substantial topics to cover,” points out Republican strategist David Johnson, who worked on Sen. Robert Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign. “We’re in a 24-hour news cycle now and just about every topic in the political realm has been exhausted,” he adds. 

“We’ve had 12 debates,” says Barbara O’Connor, director emeritus of the Institute for Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento. “What on earth is there possibly left to talk about that we don’t already know about these candidates?”

But Ms. O'Connor is quick to point out that as our political culture is increasingly dominated by visual communication, “especially in a campaign that has received so much coverage so far, the nonverbal take away rises to 80 to 90 percent of the communication.”

“Whether it’s Santorum’s sweater vest, Palin’s glasses, or Hillary Clinton’s pant suit, political fashion can serve to tell us something about the candidate,” says Catherine Wilson, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University.

When political fashion works well, such as Hillary Clinton’s pant suits, it serves as a candidate’s professional trademark. When it malfunctions – such as the "Mission Accomplished" incident when President Bush dressed in a flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq – it dramatizes an already controversial event. In these cases candidates can't avoid being drawn into the world of fashion.

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