Did you listen to Sarah Palin’s interview with Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday night? If the answer is no: Do.

This is the change we have been waiting for. This is what the Republican party is staking hope in the future on.

John McCain will always be John McCain. A lifelong public servant and war hero. A “maverick,” as we will hear hundreds more times during this campaign, who has had some tough fights with conservatives and was talking about earmarks as all hell was breaking loose on Capitol Hill and Wall Street on Monday (not the most inspiring or comforting rallying cry).

But Sarah Palin. If this Sarah Palin shows up at the debate on Thursday, ready to have a little fun and tell her story and show competence and intelligence, she’s going to give Joe Biden a run for his money in what’s likely to be the most-watched vice-presidential debate ever. She called herself a “Joe-Six-Pack American,” trumping scrappy Scranton Amtrak rider Biden. After some less-than-stellar interviews, and a lot of media coverage of the criticism even among conservatives, supporters of the McCain-Palin ticket will may be a lot more confident after hearing that interview that, perhaps, We Can Do It.

While John McCain has a solid free-market-oriented health-care plan he doesn’t talk an awful lot about, she can do it. As she did Wednesday night on Hewitt’s show.

Hewitt asked: “Governor, you mentioned the people who are struggling right now. Have you and your husband, Todd, ever faced tough economic times where you had to sit around a kitchen table and make tough choices?”

Palin responded: “Oh my goodness, yes, Hugh. I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working-class American running for such an office. But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance.”

The governor of Alaska went on to say: “We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs. Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there.”

And on the turbulent markets, she said: “And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 last week in his 401K plan that was hit. I’m thinking geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are. We understand what the problems are.”

And while the Palins are better off now than days when they were freelancing health care, she was able to talk about worries they have had about being sure to have money to send kids to college and being worried about her investments. She said, “We have to count on the federal government to be overseeing these agencies and entities, making sure that we’re not going to get screwed on this deal, and that our savings are safe.” (I wish she would have taken a hit at Fannie and Freddie, specifically: Why do we have quasi-government agencies?) I wish she had acknowledged some conservative concerns about the growth of government in this deal. After all, she seems to have demonstrated an interest in reducing the size of government where she can in Alaska. Perhaps we’ll hear about that Thursday night.

Further, Palin began to elucidate a contrast the campaign hadn’t previously taken on and must. Barack Obama is the most radical representative of the Culture of Death who has ever run for president of the United States. This pro-life “feminist” — as she described herself to Katie Couric during a pretaped interview on the campaign trail — took on Barack Obama’s record on partial-birth abortion and infanticide during her first talk-radio interview since becoming the vice-presidential nominee.

Talking about how “hurtful” some of the attacks on her and her family — for having their son Trig, who has Down Syndrome — were, she called out critics of hers, who consider her an extremist on abortion, arguing that the real extremist is Obama. She told Hewitt: “An extreme position is one that Barack Obama took when he was in the Illinois state senate,” pointing to his opposition to a bill that would protect a child born after a botched abortion and his opposition to banning partial-birth abortion.

A lot of people are going to be watching St. Louis Thursday night, when Palin and Biden will meet. Bring your own six-pack. This could be good.

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