Much of this stuff is not visible. Back in the No Child left behind days some people relatively high up in the administration where harassing a researcher based on her research. I found this out from one of her graduate students not the news.
I don't recall all the details, but a large part of the push was centered around a politically connected company selling some education materials. And the research suggested that approach was not useful.
Now extend that to issues people actually care about and I suspect a lot of this stays under the radar.
It's no Obama or any one person. It is an institutional thing. Certainly people, especially presidents, can change the institutions. That's what we're witnessing in Canada. I'm not snarking nor saying the US is worse. But it's a fact that unless your title includes "spokesperson" then you are not fully at liberty to speak.
Does every HN political post need a highly upvoted 'But the US is worse' cite-less snarking?