Who actually pulls Washington's levers? Lawrence R. Jacobs, renowned political scientist holding the McKnight Presidential Chair at University of Minnesota, spent decades revealing democracy's hidden mechanics beyond sanitized textbooks. pplpod explores groundbreaking research exposing how politicians weaponize polling data to manipulate public opinion, how the Federal Reserve demonstrates systematic bias toward finance, and how healthcare reform navigates labyrinthine political complexity. Across 17 books and over 100 scholarly articles, Jacobs demolishes myths about democratic functioning, revealing unilateral presidential power, institutional capture, and evidence-based realities obscured by official narratives. This deep dive examines political science's role in exposing American democracy's actual mechanisms ...