I periodically do comparisons of the public interest in various people, places, and things, as expressed in the number of google searches over time. I put them together using the tools provided by Google on their Google Trends website.
Today on the political news site Politico there was an article about Mitt Romney's appearance on Meet the Press.
So I put together a graph comparing the interest in Romney versus the interest in Miley Cyrus. As you can see, Cyrus wins handily except for a brief period just before the 2012 election. If you want more detailed info on this search, click on the Google Trends link just below the graph. To be fair, pop culture usually far exceeds politics as a major preoccupation of the public. But comparing specific search terms puts in in stark focus.