Some years ago, while working on a doomed presidential campaign that staked too much on a detailed, flawed health-reform proposal, I organized a meeting of the policy and communications staff tasked with explaining the plan. The hardest thing for young, healthy, insured policy wonks like us to keep in mind, I recall saying, is that the place in our brain where we think about health and security is close to the brain's locus of anxiety. And the voters most interested in health policy are also most likely to be anxious about their health or insurance coverage. And so, as frustrated as these voters may be with their current health insurance or lack thereof, they will be the least receptive to wonky explanations about how a complicated health proposal will improve the system for everyone.

In a poll released in early February, 56 percent of voters said they had paid some or a great deal of attention to the Supreme Court's Jan. 21 decision in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. If true, this complex election-law case would rank among the handful of decisions -- Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore -- of which there is broad public awareness. President Barack Obama's charge that the Court had "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests" in his State of the Union address gave the story a little drama, especially when Justice Samuel Alito was spotted expressing vigorous objection.