Failure to engage

The political news recently has been hot with Obama's statements about single-issue voters. He said these people vote just based on one issue (gun rights, for example) instead of looking at bigger-picture items like economic policy because they don't trust politicians to follow through with economic promises.

I think he has a good point. But I don't think that's the only or even main reason so many people are single-issue voters. A bigger reason, in my opinion, is that economics, foreign relations, and other "bigger-picture" policies are very complicated.

If you own a gun, or have one in mind, and the government proposes to make that gun illegal, it's a simple decision to oppose it. Move on to which policies will best maintain U.S. influence in the world, however: people who spend their whole lives studying these issues have widely diverging viewpoints. So how is your average voter - who has to work, maintain a household, often be a caretaken for children or disabled relatives, have some sort of social and/or religious life, and, oh yeah, sleep - supposed to come to an informed decision on these issues?

Our politicians and news media try to reduce everything to soundbytes. Maybe single-issue voters realize soundbytes are not a basis for an informed decision, and so only vote on issues where they understand the impact of their vote. Our society has failed to engage these voters.