> I hear that said a lot, but I doubt it, at least not with those proportions. Those things offer important perspective, but to put it bluntly: George Washington isn't running for president anymore and slavery has been abolished for more than a century. The past is the past and this is the present: there are some commonalities but also a lot of important differences.

Sure, but I doubt someone with a deep grounding in political science, economics, and history, but who'd never heard of either candidate, would need more than an hour or so on Google to decide between Trump and Biden, for instance. Our choices are, as voters, for better or worse, pretty limited.

Frankly, I often make decisions about local candidates or ballot initiatives based on like 5 minutes of research. I doubt any of those choices would change if I closely followed all those candidates and issues and spent 50x more time on them—what might change them is if I'd read fewer, or different, books. (meanwhile, if I wanted to make any actual difference in the world, I'm aware that what I ought to do is get involved with one of the big two political parties, at the local level)