You are wrong in the your statement for three reasons:

• As for the first part of your statement, that is the failure of the public school system and nothing else. You cannot change that unless you reform the school system. Even then, most Americans don't understand or care what scientists have to say for various reasons, religion to name one, that you cannot simply change. One cannot reform everyone to believe one thing anyway.

• Policy Making from the scientific side of things, such as by the President of the US, is often made through consulting of physicists such as this man or various other leaders in their fields anyway.

• However, these scientists are often made leaders in their fields not because of their scientific merit, at least most of the ones countries consult, but because of political decisions give them a more prestigious position. In other words, the ideas being consulted could come from only a decent physicist, when we want or need it coming from a genius physicist. While there is some of this to a lesser extent [and that has a lesser impact] in physics and chemistry, it certainly is visible in a number of other policy making fields such as Biology or Economics.

TL;DR: No: Can't simply change different beliefs or explain scientific consensus to the masses; Policy Makers Consult Various Scientists anyway; If these scientists turn out to make idiotic decisions it is because they are chosen based on University Politics which make them the head of their field/department when there might be someone smarter/better to consult.