We Expect Too Little of Citizens

It has become fashionable to say ordinary Americans cannot be expected to follow politics very closely. Some commentators even argue that this is how self-government is supposed to work: citizens should be free to live their lives while elected officials handle the public business.

That sounds humane and realistic, but it quietly teaches a damaging lesson: politics is somebody else’s job, and the public is asking too much of itself if it tries to understand what government is doing.

That is the part worth rejecting.

No, people do not need to follow politics every hour of every day. A healthy civic life is not the same thing as doomscrolling, rage-posting, or treating every headline like a five-alarm fire. But there is a wide space between obsessive 24/7 political consumption and barely paying attention at all, and that middle ground is exactly where democratic citizenship ought to live.

The problem is that the bar has been set shockingly low. In recent years, only about one-third of Americans have said they follow national political news “very closely,” and that level is treated as normal outside moments of intense national conflict. In other words, as a culture, we have grown comfortable calling it normal when only a minority of the public pays close attention to national politics in ordinary times.

That is not just a statistic. It is a statement about expectations.

And people live up to the expectations set for them.

When citizens are told, directly or indirectly, that politics is too complicated, too exhausting, too inside-baseball, or simply not their responsibility, many will accept the invitation to tune out. Plenty of people understandably say they avoid politics because it is negative, stressful, omnipresent, and bad for their mental health.

Those feelings are real. But the public response to that exhaustion should not be to shrug and say, “Fair enough, most people were never supposed to know much anyway.”

That idea is not just discouraging. It is fundamentally at odds with self-government.

James Madison put the matter plainly: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

That is not a theory of democracy in which the public is expected to drift in and out of awareness while professionals manage the republic. It is a theory of democracy in which citizens must be equipped to govern themselves.

Thomas Jefferson made a similar point. “I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” he wrote, and if people are not sufficiently enlightened to exercise that power wisely, “the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.”

That is a crucial distinction. The answer to an uninformed public is not lower expectations; it is better civic formation, better information, and stronger habits of attention.

Madison’s warning did not stop at “popular information.” He insisted equally on “the means of acquiring it.” That is where schools, media, and civic institutions come in. Civic education should not just rehearse the three branches of government in eighth grade and move on; it should help people practice the habits of steady, bounded attention to public life. News organizations should emphasize explanation over outrage. Local governments should communicate clearly and consistently about what they are doing and how residents can weigh in. Community groups, libraries, and civic projects should treat ordinary people as future decision-makers, not passive audiences. If citizens are expected to arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives, then institutions have a responsibility to make that knowledge genuinely accessible—and to send the message that it belongs to everyone.

That is why the argument that people “have their lives to live” is true but incomplete. Of course they do. People work, raise families, care for aging parents, pay bills, and try to make it through the week with some energy left over.

But they also somehow manage to learn the standings, follow free-agency rumors, memorize celebrity drama, or keep up with plot twists in shows that require genuine attention. That does not prove politics should consume their lives. It does prove that Americans are perfectly capable of sustained attention when the culture tells them something matters.

And politics does matter. It shapes wages, schools, reproductive freedom, voting rules, labor protections, health care, public safety, civil rights, and whether public institutions work at all. Those are not niche concerns for hobbyists. They are the operating rules of daily life.

Treating politics as optional knowledge is like treating the owner’s manual for the machinery around your life as irrelevant because reading it is inconvenient.

A better standard is available, and it is not extreme. Citizens do not need to become policy analysts. They do not need to be glued to cable news or know every committee assignment in Congress. But in a functioning democracy, it should be ordinary to expect adults to know who represents them, to understand the basic structure of government, to follow major local and national issues at a steady pace, and to show up consistently as voters and participants.

That is not an impossible burden. It is the minimum working knowledge self-government requires.

This is where public culture matters. Too often, commentators respond to political disengagement by normalizing it. They hear that people are tired, overwhelmed, or turned off by conflict and conclude that broad ignorance is simply the natural resting state of a free society.

But what if the better response is to challenge people with respect? What if, instead of saying, “No one can be expected to follow this,” the message were: “You do not need to obsess, but you absolutely can understand the basics, and your country needs you to.”

That shift matters because expectations are formative. When schools, media, leaders, and civic institutions treat ordinary people as capable of learning, judging, and participating, more people rise to meet that standard. When those same institutions suggest politics is too messy or technical for most citizens, people learn helplessness instead.

The problem is not that Americans are incapable of civic attention. The problem is that too many elites speak as though they are.

The goal, then, is not more frenzy. It is more steadiness.

Less doomscrolling, more regular attention. Less treating politics like a spectator sport, more treating it like a shared responsibility. Less panic, more literacy about institutions, elections, rights, and local government.

A healthier democratic norm would ask for something modest but meaningful: know the basics, follow the stakes, and stay engaged enough to act when it counts.

That is not too much to ask of a free people. It may be the least that self-government can ask.

And maybe that is the deeper problem with the “don’t expect too much” argument: it confuses compassion with condescension. A democracy does not honor people by assuming they cannot understand public life. It honors them by inviting them into it. Madison did not say popular government could survive on vibes, impressions, and occasional irritation. He said a people who mean to govern themselves must arm themselves with knowledge.

Self-government is not sustained by experts alone. It depends on ordinary people believing that public life belongs to them, that they are capable of understanding it, and that paying attention is part of their freedom. We do not need a nation of obsessives. We need a nation of citizens.