But then again, maybe not. There are a fair few voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio who are concerned about the peace process and the ultimate fate of the island their ancestors came from.

In 2000, Al Gore won Pennsylvania by 4 percentage points. George Bush won Ohio by precisely the same amount. No wonder then that the candidates are spending so much time in both.

And no wonder that the word was about in recent days that the Kerry-Edwards campaign would not in the least mind if an Irish presidential forum were held in either one, or indeed Florida, land of sunlight and electoral glare.

Clearly, there is a strong desire on the part of many Irish-American Democrats to see a return to the days of Bill Clinton and an interventionist presidential hand in the struggle to make Northern Ireland a place that can truly claim democratic normalcy -- with a small "d".

Certainly, the Kerry campaign has been playing to that drumbeat, what with an Irish statement late last year, a far more comprehensive one this past spring, a jibe at President Bush over "leadership" on the eve of Bush's June departure for County Clare, a brief acknowledgement of Ireland in the Democratic platform followed by a clear-cut pledge on presidential intervention in the Kerry-Edwards policy book, "Our Plan For America."

On the surface at least, it seems that the Democrats have been making all the running.

President Bush, meanwhile, has been to Ireland twice, but in contexts other than the North.

But there's more to all this than what presidents do or don't do, and what presidential candidates say they will do. Of particular interest lately is the role of the State Department, both in an overt sense and behind the scenes.

There were groans from many when it became clear in the early days of this Bush administration that the State Department would be getting Ireland back from the National Security Council.

During the Clinton years, the NSC was the stewpot in which the Irish issue was, after an initial reluctance, well stirred. The NSC works out of the White House so it was easy enough for Clinton to be involved, or seen to be so.

The State Department conjures up a different image. Indeed, for many Irish Americans, the pile on C Street has long been seen as an anglophile club where no Irish concerns need apply.

There was more than a grain of truth in this perception. But times have moved on a bit since the James Baker days, when even the suggestion of U.S. involvement in the search for a settlement in Ireland was brushed aside as if it was an annoying gnat.

Baker, many will recall, made a bit of a show of himself at the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996. In his foreign policy speech to the GOP faithful, he took Clinton to task for his polices on Ireland and especially the White House strategy of dealing face-to-face with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

"We have seen a representative of the IRA hosted in the White House just prior to its resumption of terrorist bombings in London," he said. "The result has been the worst relationship with our closest ally, Britain, since the Boston Tea Party."

The inference that Britain was somehow an ally at the time of that 1773 bash in Boston was not lost on Irish-American political leaders, who lashed into the man who became quickly known as "King James of Texas."

Of course, Baker was merely sounding out the predictable. There would be no dissenting voices heard from within the State Department at the time, and certainly no one was about to pop up and remind the secretary of state that his party's own presidential candidate that year, Bob Dole, had also met Adams.

Eight years on and it's hard to imagine Colin Powell stepping into it in the way that Baker did. And he's certainly not about to apologize for the Boston Tea Party.

The present State Department is far from being completely above Irish-American suspicions, but the work of special envoys Richard Haass and his successor, Mitchell Reiss, has won praise, some of it grudging, some not, from activists who still go to sleep at night and have nightmares of a Union Jack flying atop the U.S. version of the British Foreign Office.

Reiss, of course, has been in the hot seat of late over his e-mail to Fr. Sean McManus about Orange Order marches.

The State Department has been ducking and weaving on this one, but it's hard not to believe that this was a deliberate leak, one designed to square the circle a bit given that Reiss has been criticized for his view that Sinn Féin should get on board with the new police force in the North.

Two things are possible here. Either Reiss was ignorant, naïve or both with regard to who he was dealing with or he was sending up a kite with a little help from a veteran Capitol Hill Irish campaigner who has made dissemination of his views on Irish issues the task of a lifetime.

McManus is a Redemptorist and his order does not take a vow of silence.

The fact that the State Department is at least attempting to be evenhanded in its criticism will bolster Irish-American GOP supporters as they prepare for their upcoming convention in New York.

Four years ago, there was something of an arms race between Democrats and Republicans over their respective party platform statements on Ireland. The Republicans won by virtue of a more comprehensive statement.

This year, the expectations at Madison Square Garden will be raised, not because of the 2000 GOP statement, but by all the words flowing from the Kerry-Edwards camp.

In this context, it is harder still to take seriously the State Department explanation that Reiss's e-mailed fist-in-the-face of the Orange Order was itself taken, in the words of a State Department official, "out of context."

The context is about moving all parties in the North toward a final settlement. From that specific perspective, and given the history of recent years, everybody's transom is likely to deserve a kick at some point. The State Department would now seem to accept this rationale.