Sarah Palin hopes that God will "show her the way" on any future bid for the White House.

In an interview with Fox News Channel the deafeated Reublican vice-presidential candidate said if God showed her "the open door" to the presidency, she would go through it.

She refused to say whether she planned to run for the US presidency in four years. But the devoutly religious Alaskan governor she would wait to be shown the way.

"Faith is a very big part of my life," she said. "And putting my life in my creator's hands - this is what I always do," she said, according to excercts of the interview released by Fox News Channel before the inteview is broadcast.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is," she added.

"Even if it's cracked up a little bit, maybe I'll plough right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don't let me miss an open door.

"And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plough through that door."

Ms Palin insisted that she neither wanted nor asked for the controversial $150,000-plus wardrobe bought for the campaign by the Republican Party, and said she thought the issue was an odd one at the end of the campaign, considering "what is going on in the world today."

"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," she said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from Day One. But that is kind of an odd issue, an odd campaign issue as things were wrapping up there as to who ordered what and who demanded what."

In a separate interview over the weekend, Ms Palin blamed the policies of the Bush administrtion for John McCain's defeat.

"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration?," she told the Anchorage Daily News.

" If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing," she said.

In the same newspaper, her father revealed that she spent part of the weekend going through her wardrobe to determine which items belonged to the Republican Party.

"She was just frantically ... trying to sort stuff out, Chuck Heath said. "That's the problem, you know, the kids lose underwear, and everything has to be accounted for. "

Ms Palin and the McCain campaign team were criticised over the $150,000 spent at upmarket stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue to dress her. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was bought for Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

After the election, McCain aides told claimed that Ms Palin had spents thousands of dollars more than the $150,000 that had been admitted to, and had used the money to dress other members of her family.

But Mr Heath told the Anchorage Daily News that his daughter insisted the only clothing or accessories she personally had purchased in the last four months was a pair of shoes.

RNC lawyers have been discussing with Ms Palin whether what's left of the clothing and accessories purchased for her on the campaign trail will go to charity, back to stores or be paid for by her, a McCain-Palin campaign official said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the campaign hadn't authorized comment.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?