I absolutely refuse to watch another Sarah Palin interview.

It’s not because I don’t like the lady and don’t want to hear what she has to say. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s because I want to hear what she’s about and what she believes in and that’s why I won’t listen anymore.

I’ve watched her with Charlie Gibson, Sean Hannity, and Katie Couric since she’s become the vice-presidential nominee. I’ve gotten a sense that she can take a fight. That she has some good instincts. That she clings to her Bible and her Second Amendment and the Obamas wouldn’t get her. I like all that about her.

But I also watch these interviews and I cringe a little. That Russia answer with Couric. Oy. It was a loaded question to be sure. But I thought a certain governor of Alaska had told us this was a time for no blinking. For (Uncle) Sam’s sake. You’re Sarah Palin. You’re governor of Alaska. You’re the mom of five. You’re married to a tough guy. You can handle America’s Former Sweetheart. And yet, you didn’t. She may have come off catty, but you came off hesitant and unprepared. What happened to the pitbull? I see the lipstick.

I don’t know Sarah Palin. Having missed the last cruise to Alaska, I’ve actually never met her. National Review wasn’t on her list of stops this week in New York. So I can’t pretend to know what her wiring is all about. But I know I like a lot of what I’ve heard her say. I also know a lot of what I like about her could be projection. I’m not where my friend Kathleen Parker is — wanting her to step aside to spend more time with her family and Alaska — but that’s not a crazy suggestion. She’s right to say that something’s gotta change.

My guess — based on nothing but hope for a change — is that Sarah Palin just needs some freedom. I don’t know who is holding her back but if John McCain wants to win this thing it had better not be him and his staff. When I watch these interviews, I see a woman who looks like she’s stayed up all night studying and is trying to remember the jurisprudential chronology of privacy vis-a-vis reproduction, the war on terror, and public figures (add 12 more things, described in the most complicated way possible, to the list to be more accurate). She looks like a woman who’s been cramming talking points and great Matt Scully lines and Mark Salter-McCain war stories and Steve Schmidt marching orders into her head since that first plane ride from Alaska. She looks like a woman who has ceased being the confident, successful executive who got herself elected governor of Alaska without the full force of her party behind her and managed to have an approval rating of which most can’t even dream.

This seems wholly unnecessary. People love Sarah Palin when they see her. When she’s firing at full force, she comes off as authentic, self-possessed, and ready for a fight. If that is Sarah Palin, that’s the Sarah Palin who should be talking to everyone she can. That’s the Sarah Palin who should call up Rush Limbaugh. That’s the Sarah Palin who should go on The View. Heck, I thought she should have dropped in on Keith Olbermann while she was in the Big Apple and charm his official Bush-Derangement-Syndrome socks off or be cheered for trying.

Conservatives are inclined to love Palin. Hard-working, all-American family men and women who don’t have their head full of left-wing theories about Republicans are frequently warm to her — if not outright excited. Even the Left knows the attraction or they wouldn’t be going so insane over her.

She’s a rapist! She’s a fascist! She’s not a woman!

If Sarah Palin is John McCain’s secret weapon, let her go, whoever is holding her back. And, frankly, if it turns out that the “authentic” Palin of rallies and the Republican convention is just good speech delivery in a woman with some good spirit, I want to know that sooner rather than later. (Mitt’s still available. Someone in Washington who can actually run a business and knows something about the economy will come in handy once the federal government owns the U.S. banking system.) But if the Palin we know and love and have projected our hopes for sanity in American politics is the real Sarah Palin — then come out from the shadows, woman. You’re the one who is going to win this election. Be yourself. Otherwise, what’s the point?

– Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.