‘She has ignited something unusual,” John McCain said of his running mate, Sarah Palin, during a St. Louis-area radio interview earlier this week.

In a sense it’s nothing at all unusual. It’s all too usual and common. It’s just not what Washington tends to send out on the campaign trail. It took an outsider to change American politics.

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“I’m a simple talker,” Palin told Rush Limbaugh when she called in to the talk-radio king and his 20 million or so listeners on Tuesday.

As Rush framed it, she is waging a campaign against most of the mainstream media in this country. Palin is representing “good, commonsense, patriotic hard-working Americans” — the people who don’t always feel adequately represented: for example, when the mortgage industry collapses, and they see themselves bailing out irresponsible people because the people they sent to Washington looked the other way while a quasi-governmental agency gave cut-rate loans to undeserving borrowers.

“He picked someone who does not have to pretend to relate to me, my family, and the challenges we face every day.”

That comes from an e-mail I received this week. It reflects thousands of e-mails that I have received since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. It is a very different attitude toward the Arizona senator’s choice of the Alaskan governor than you’ll hear from others — including some people I know and love and publish.

I hate the word “elitist.” This is a pet peeve stemming from experience. “Elitist” doesn’t need to be a swear word, but it has gained a largely negative connotation. Someone might nonjudgmentally observe that I can fairly be called an elitist because I have a voice at a prominent conservative venue. But I have been called an elitist for opposing Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court — with the suggestion that I hated her because she didn’t go to an Ivy League school. Well, I didn’t go to one either. The arguments against Miers on the Court were about the Constitution. They were about a wasted opportunity. They were ultimately about Sam Alito, and so I have no doubt I was right.