I spoke on the phone Sunday with Sarah Palin, who was in Long Beach, Calif., preparing to take off on her next campaign trip. It was the first time I’d talked with her since I met her in far more relaxed circumstances in Alaska over a year ago. But even though she’s presumably now under some strain and stress, she seemed, as far as I could tell, confident and upbeat.

In terms of substance, some of what she had to say was unsurprising: She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the mainstream media, and she believes an Obama administration would kill jobs by raising taxes. But she said a couple of things that were, I thought, either personally touching or politically provocative.

At one point, noting that Palin had remarked ruefully almost a week ago that her son Track had been, since his recent deployment to Iraq, in touch with his girlfriend but not his mother, I asked whether she had subsequently heard from him.

Palin told me she had. “He called the day of the debate, and it was so wonderful because it was the first call since they were deployed over there, and it was like a burden lifted even when I heard his voice.” Palin said that she told him that she had a debate that night. “And he says, ‘Yeah, I heard, Mom,’ and he says, ‘Have you been studying?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I have,’ and he goes, ‘O.K., well I’ll be praying.’ I’m like  total role reversal here, that’s what I’ve been telling him for 19 years.”