Before elections or just in general, what do you do to get to know people in power?

I personally use Wikipedia as a clear, quick way to learn about politicians from front to back. Also, near elections, I tend to do a quick web search alongside this to try and get a feel of what current events are saying about candidates, now that they're in the limelight.

This started as a sub-thread in a topic about possible contenders for the 2020 US Presidential race, but it generated enough interesting discussion that I thought it'd be worth spinning off into its own topic, particularly so we can include people outside the US who are ignoring or filtering out topics about American politics.

To expand on the questions in the topic title:

• What level of education should be required by law of every citizen?
• How should schools be funded? What role should taxes play vs. tuition paid by the student or their parents?
• Should homeschooling be allowed, and if so, how strict should the educational requirements be?

And if you want to go really deep:

• What is the purpose of education in the first place? Is it to make better and more productive workers; to create an informed electorate; to learn for the sake of learning?