In 2018, New York Magazine ran an article titled “Donald Trump Is Destroying My Marriage” (Langmuir 2018). The piece featured first-person stories from four individual people and two couples discussing how politics in general – but Trump’s 2016 election in particular – created tension in their relationships. The people featured in these stories discussed disagreements with their partners over the political issues of the day (though other disagreements could be better classified as arguments over care responsibilities in a marriage). For some of the people featured, these disagreements led to divorce. Donald Trump, wrote author Molly Langmuir in the article’s introduction to the personal stories, “sent shockwaves through heterosexual romance.”

In 1946, the American Political Science Association (APSA) established the Committee on Political Parties, to be led by political scientist E. E. Schattschneider. Four years later, this committee would produce a report with a series of recommendations for American political parties – a report that, in 2020 America, seems, at best, quaint. American parties, the report suggested, needed to do more to distinguish their policy positions and do so with a greater sense of party loyalty. Now, the parties need not go overboard: “It is here not suggested, of course, that the parties should disagree about everything. Parties do not, and need not, take a position on all questions that allow for controversy” (APSA Report 1950, 20). Rather, the parties should offer what the report termed “policy alternatives on matters likely to be of interest to the whole country” (20).

Bobby once owned twenty-two cars. In fact, he had so many cars that he had to store them “everywhere, in my garages, friends’ and relative’s garages” (Bloch, Commuri, and Arnold 2009, 54). Bobby, as his twenty-two cars might suggest, is deeply involved in cars and auto-repair. He attributes his deep involvement to his childhood interactions with his father, who, Bobby recalls, also loved cars. When he owned the twenty-two cars, Bobby says, “My two sons were old enough to enjoy cars as well and they too were hooked” (Bloch, Commuri, and Arnold 2009, 54).

Much of the modern study of mass political behavior in the United States often returns to three books released during the Eisenhower administration. Voting by Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee (1954) approached its subject from a sociological perspective. Anthony Downs’ (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy is the foundational study of political decision-making from the rational-choice perspective. The American Voter by Campbell et al. (1960) pioneered the use of the mass survey for political research. These approaches to studying politics are ubiquitous now, but, at the time, these were pathbreaking methodological advances. The authors of these books were to the study of politics what Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley were to popular music.

The night of the 2016 presidential election, eight-year-old Miriam was, according to her father, “inconsolable.” Miriam, as her father Eli Shearn told The Washington Post some four years later, had become very engaged in the 2016 presidential campaign – something that Shearn had encouraged (Rubin 2020). Miriam’s parents were strong supporters of then-Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, setting up Miriam with red and blue crayons to watch the votes come in on election night. When Clinton lost the election to Republican Donald Trump, Miriam went to bed crying. Shearn told The Post he remembered thinking: “Why did I get her so invested in this?”

The long-running British quiz show, Mastermind, has a very simple premise: Contestants sit in a chair and face the quizmaster who asks them a series of trivia questions. In the first round of an episode, the questions are all on a single subject that the contestant has chosen as his or her specialty. The specialty subject questions can be quite specific – for example, “The 7th Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution] provided for the right to a jury trial if the amount concerned in the case exceeded a certain sum of money; how much?” The only way to succeed on Mastermind is to have dedicated a good deal of time to your specialty topic. In essence, Mastermind is deep involvement packaged as a game show.

It is often said that jazz is the only true American art form. It is also probably the least consumed genre of music in America.

Of course, some people do like jazz. They will tap their feet and snap their fingers when they hear Duke Ellington. They may note, with fondness, how much they love Dizzy Gillespie. They may even read a think piece on how Norah Jones brought a mixture of jazz and pop into the mainstream of American music.

Morris B. Holbrook is not one of these people.

In 2019, the Knight Foundation surveyed 4,000 “persistent nonvoters” – people who had stayed home for the majority of the previous six national elections. These people are, as the survey data suggest, not deeply involved in politics. In fact, they are unusual for the total lack of involvement: Voter turnout in America is not as high as it could be, but most people vote at least in presidential elections if they are eligible. From one perspective, the nonvoters in both, Knight’s survey and, later, their focus groups, serve as a contrast to the deeply involved people in Chapter 3 – people who stayed up late at night reading the news and felt anxious when they could not follow the news. But from another perspective, many of the nonvoters were acutely aware of politics: The focus group participant we quote earlier reports that their voting options “suck,” another participant worried about voting for the “lesser of two evils,” and still another questioned whether people in government can actually represent them.

In Back to the Future, one of the few things that Marty McFly takes with him from 1985 to 1955 is a camcorder. Marveling over the video camera, Doc Brown exclaims, “This is truly amazing; a portable television studio. No wonder your president has to be an actor.” The camcorder is an amazing invention, but it is a limited one. Although it has one aspect of a television studio, it lacks its most important component: a true broadcasting antenna. Only people who are physically in the same area as the camcorder can see the recording.