John Derbyshire writes:
Knee-deep as we have all been, for over a year now, in political chat, we forget how very little most Americans care about politics. A week or so ago a very intelligent, professional acquaintance said to me: "Hey, this Obama guy is something new, isn't he? It would be so cool to have a black President!" It was obvious, from the remark and subsequent conversation, that Sen. Obama had just then, for the first time, impinged on my friend's consciousness, in mid-March of 2008.
I am sure it won't be at all difficult to turn up people in mid-October saying: "Hey, this Obama guy is something new …"
Robert Conquest argues in one of his books that this widespread indifference to politics is one of the great strengths of Anglo-Saxon civilization.
Along the same lines, Byron York cites an e-mail he received:
I am a professor of political science at a state university. When I tried to incorporate the controversy/speech into a segment on elections, I was stunned to find out that only 16 students out of nearly 100 were familiar with the issue and had watched/read the speech OR seen news coverage of it.