Americans see presidents affecting their personal lives very little
Salacious stories get attention but don’t connect government to voters.
I love it when a chart of survey data catches my attention and makes me think “hmmm…” which is exactly what happened when I saw the chart pictured (from this Pew Research post).
Why aren’t people connecting their personal lives to who is president in the same way they connect a host of other issues to the person in the Oval Office? It’s not that I was surprised. I’ve seen and heard this disconnect in research for many years. Those of us who live and breathe politics want to lay out the thousands of reasons it does matter to their personal lives.
But instead, for this week’s column, I put myself in the shoes of someone who only hears a little bit of the loudest news of the week. When I did that, considering the biggest news stories seemed to provide my answer: A lot of the topics are not easily relatable.
