Lippmann: Philosopher-Journalist

I think I would have liked the 18th century if I had been one of the people privileged to enjoy it.

--Walter Lippmann, 1969 He could have held his own in an 18th century salon or coffeehouse, spar ring civilly with the prophets of the Enlightenment. His faith in the dispassion ate application of reason to the muddle of human affairs was no less firm than Voltaire's. His prowess at drawing his tory's sweep from the minutiae of daily events might have impressed even Gibbon. Had they discoursed on politics, he and Edmund Burke would have found themselves on the same aloof Olympian plane.

An author, editor, columnist and diplomatic historian, he lectured statesmen and private citizens for 60 years. Although he relinquished his syndicated column Today and Tomorrow in 1967, he remained a close observer of world events. When he died last week at 85, he left the unfinished manuscript of his 27th book. Its working title, The Ungovernability of Man, reflected another, different 18th century strain in his character, an occasional Swiftian despair at the aberrations of the "minor Dark Age" into which he had been born.

Genteel Socialist. He was the only child of affluent German-Jewish parents (his father was a successful clothing manufacturer in New York City). Walter's early memories were of brownstone comforts, horse-and-buggy rides through Central Park, frequent trips to Europe. He entered Harvard with the class of 1910. There he absorbed William James' challenge to test all hand-me-down truths against the pragmatic standards of experience and reason.

Lippmann left Cambridge a genteel Socialist, worked for a year on Lincoln Steffens' muckraking Everybody's Magazine. His first book, A Preface to Politics, was written after he served a brief stint as secretary to the Rev. George R. Lunn of Schenectady, N.Y., one of America's first Socialist mayors. But no dogma could contain Lippmann for long. He soon abandoned Socialism--but not all of its causes--and in 1914 became one of the founders of the liberal New Republic.

During the war years, Lippmann left journalism briefly to serve as a member of "the Inquiry," a clandestine group of theorists charged by President Wilson with drawing up terms of an acceptable peace. The young adviser helped formulate Wilson's Fourteen Points and prepared a commentary on the peace terms to clarify them for the Allies. But Lippmann was disillusioned by the Versailles Treaty, believing that the conditions it imposed would inexorably lead to another war. He returned briefly to the New Republic, and then in 1921 signed on as an editorial writer for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

During the Republican '20s, the World was the nation's most articulate Democratic newspaper, and Lippmann's stately leaders became required reading for policymakers of all persuasions. When Lippmann later took command of the World's editorial page, he transformed it into an austere daily seminar. Novelist James M. Cain, then an editorial associate, warned Lippmann that not all World readers were up to the demands that he made on their intelligence. "You are always trying to dredge up basic principles," Cain said. "Now if what you've got to blow is a bugle, there isn't any sense in camping yourself down in front of piano music." Lippmann replied:"You may be right, but God damn it, I'm not going to spend my life writing bugle calls."

Throughout the '20s, Lippmann denounced in measured terms the main thrusts of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He opposed the isolationism that kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations and the World Court. He consistently skewered the passive presidencies of Harding and Coolidge (his epitaph on the latter's Administration: "Nothing ventured, nothing lost"). Neither Lippmann nor the World foresaw the Great Depression, but his verdicts on the '20s --reached in the heat of daily events--have held up remarkably well.

The World folded into a merger with the New York Telegram in 1931; on the afternoon of the announcement, Ogden Reid, owner of the nation's most influential Republican paper, asked Lippmann to write two columns a week for the New York Herald Tribune. The switch startled many, and some of Lippmann's liberal friends accused him of selling out to the conservative opposition. Their suspicions seemed to be confirmed later when Lippmann blasted the "collectivism" of the New Deal. In the 1936 election, Lippmann supported Alfred Landon.

But Lippmann had not gone over to the Republicans. He was simply displaying once again his distrust of any grand scheme whose success depended on measures he considered oppressive. "The Good Society has no architectural design," he wrote in 1937. "There are no blueprints." Lippmann's refusal to interpret events according to doctrine struck some critics as vacillation. In fact, Lippmann shifted far less than did the political spectrum against which his positions were measured.

Inconvenient Army. Most columnists' predictions are forgotten in a matter of days or weeks. Walter Lippmann's were not, and even admirers cherished his occasional blunders, perhaps to reassure themselves that he was human. He undervalued F.D.R.'s abilities and failed to take Hitler very seriously until 1939. In September 1941, calling the U.S. Army a "definite inconvenience," he urged a reduction in the armed forces and a step-up of economic aid to England and Russia. Harry Truman's upset victory in 1948 forced Lippmann to begin his next column with the pained and decidedly un-Delphic admission: "As one who did not foresee the result of the election . . ."

A more serious weakness was Lippmann's detachment from the mire of human affairs. Comfortable in the company of statesmen and scholars, he did not always comprehend popular emotions or their impact on public policy. Lippmann derided the cold war, arguing reasonably that the Soviet Union and China would inevitably dominate their "orbits" as the U.S. did its own. This view is now grudgingly echoed in U.S. foreign policy, but Lippmann's refusal to give weight to the explosive emotions of the cold war drew much criticism when tensions were at their peak. His writing style was elegant and correct to the last comma, but his artful convolutions sometimes trapped readers between unresolved propositions. Press Critic A.J. Liebling once called Lippmann "perhaps the greatest on-the-one-hand-this writer in the world today."

Whatever Lippmann's gaffes, they were but a small fraction of the 10 million words he committed to print. His column was ultimately syndicated in more than 200 papers; it brought him wealth, honors and worldwide fame. His lean, dignified presence was another of Washington's monuments. An invitation to the home he and his vivacious wife Helen had on Woodley Road, near the National Cathedral, was a command performance (Mrs. Lippmann died in February). Lippmann--called "the autocrat of the dinner table" by awed guests--would lead evening companions through Socratic questions on an encyclopedic range of subjects.

Presidents coveted Lippmann's approval and usually felt obliged to respond to his criticism. Both F.D.R. and Truman lashed out bitterly when Lippmann opposed them. John F. Kennedy and his advisers invited Lippmann's advice and political imprimatur. But when a Lippmann column scolded J.F.K.'s policies, the President fumed and asked intimates why he should bother reading press criticisms of his actions. "Well," he answered himself, "it's still Walter Lippmann."

Never Again. Lippmann's most famous public feud was with Lyndon Johnson. L.B. J. had courted Lippmann's support on the Viet Nam War in the belief that Lippmann could swing the nation's liberals and academics into line; the vilification heaped on Lippmann for his opposition prompted Washington Post Cartoonist Herblock to write of the Johnson Administration's "War on Walter Lippmann."

At the height of public acrimony in 1967, Lippmann gave up his Washington home and moved back to New York. Journalist Marquis Childs recalls Lippmann's dejection at the time: "He was saying 'Never again, never again.' " But he continued to speak out as a contributor to Newsweek and in interviews.

Richard Nixon's diplomatic moves toward China and the Soviet Union won Lippmann's praise, but he lamented the Watergate morass as "the worst scandal in our history."

Crises, however, did not panic him. In a speech 40 years ago he said: "The world will go on somehow, and more crises will follow. It will go on best, however, if among us there are men who have stood apart, who refused to be anxious or too much concerned, who were cool and inquiring, and had their eyes on a longer past and a longer future." He was such a man to the end.

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