But the fact of the matter is that who's on the SCOTUS has almost as little direct effect on the daily life of the average person as the average person has effect on who's on the SCOTUS. All our interactions with SCOTUS are very indirect, they allow bad laws to stand that somebody else wrote, that another set of somebody elses passed, and that still another set of somebody elses will enforce. That lack of direct relationship is why the average person has very little interest in them.
No what makes it on the nightly news is whatever makes good TV. It's always TV first, and charcoal drawings of blackrobed people don't make good TV, which is why SCOTUS doesn't get on TV much.
Notice that's all indirect, especially since the goverment gets their taste of your paycheck first, you don't actually pay into medicare; your employer pays into medicare, partly from your check and partly from their own coffers, on your behalf. There's no direct interaction on your city not getting blown up either, friends and relatives in the service is not a direct interaction with the central fed gov either. Really the primary direct interaction most of us have with the federal government every day revolves around our mailbox.
The citizens have never truly understood their government and what it is up to, not in America, not in any other place, and it will never happen. Government by it's very nature is too fuzzy, too ill defined, and does far too much behind closed doors. Most people in the government don't understand how it really works, between the crooks at the top and the beauracrats that really get stuff done government is really an undefinable thing. The best we can hope for is a serious understanding of the founding documents to get an idea of how are government is supposed to work, but doesn't really.