The Phantom Public Summary

The American voters felt alienated because there is an unequal status in the political system. Within the article Hardwood references “The Phantom Public” that gives a good picture of how the American people feel about politics. The citizens are similar to a deaf spectator in the farthest row who is trying to pay attention but cannot follow even though everything being said will affect them known as “The man in the Back Row” (32). There was a point in time where the people had a passion for politics, some for the good while other for the bad. Anyone could choose and gain an office, people would gather for rallies and Newspapers helped hype this until it took a turn into the other direction.
What had caused this drop in turnout has a few speculations but one was the Progressive reformers. Reformers mostly came from the middle and upper class that believed there was a too much raw democracy which was destroying the country and needed to be fixed (33). There were many proposals that were brought forth to help the government and
This is not a favorable argument for many and instead, another suspect to the drop in voter turnout is that of the press and media. A scholar Michael Robinson wrote his doctoral thesis on the media and how they were consistently propagandistic and even at times criticizing with their coverage (35). The media focuses on the negatives whether it be a news story or a political ad, they are the ones who bring these images to the American public to see the politics in this light. Thus this actually drives many people to the point of avoiding any type of involvement of the government and politics. In recent studies, there have been similar results to what Robinson wrote about with the media creating cynicism and pushing people away from the government