For more information
Call 1-800-351-0222
Call 1-800-351-0222
LIPPMANN, WALTER.
Term Paper ID:20641
Essay Subject:
Columnist's background & influence of his writing on public opinion from New Deal to Truman era. Evaluation of major social & political issues, views & methods.... More...
14 Pages / 3150 Words
8 sources, 26 Citations,
TURABIAN Format
$56.00
More Papers on This Topic
Paper Abstract:
Columnist's background & influence of his writing on public opinion from New Deal to Truman era. Evaluation of major social & political issues, views & methods.
Paper Introduction:
Walter Lippmann was a syndicated columnist with considerable influence. He wrote his column for over 40 years, and it appeared in leading newspapers in the United States and throughout the world, going into semiretirement in 1967, leaving a number of readers who had long depended on his column without an important part of their lives. He started his life as a journalist before the First World War and would continue writing into the Vietnam War era some 50 years later. Lippmann had a strong influence on various presidents and political leaders, and he made use of this influence to try to shape policy and influence decision-making in government. Many journalists and columnists may aspire to this sort of power, but few achieve it to the degree that Lippmann did. Biographer Ronald Steel writes,
Influence was Lippmann's stock-in-trade; was what made
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
[7]Ibid., 13-14. He had said before the election that Roosevelt had no particularqualifications for the office; now, Lippmann saw Roosevelt as aninspirational leader. Understanding Lippmann requires understanding his background and thechanges in his professional life to some degree. He believed that Britain andFrance could hold back Hitler on their own, but after Munich he was nolonger certain of this. Under these conditions those who were most dogmatic in the old faiths. Lippmann at first wantedto be a professor, but he abandoned this, retaining his intellectual bentbut directing it into a new avenue through his newspaper work first as ajournalist and then as a columnist. Lippmann rightly saw the world as becoming moreinterdependent in the twentieth century than it had been in the nineteenth,and as transportation and communication caused the world to "shrink," thisfact was emphasized more and more. New York: Macmillan, 1969.Zinn, Howard. As an engineer,however, Hoover was also deeply impressed by the virtue of science and tothe idea of bringing scientific principles to bear in public life for thebenefit of society. [15]Steel, 3 2. He made relief a federal responsibility and provided mortgageaid for farmers. Evenwhen he was supporting the New Deal, he began to caution that these typesof exercises in central control posed dangers. [5]D. He then watched how they worked over time and came to theconclusion that the New Deal was too dangerous to be allowed to continueunfettered. [8]Ibid., 1 6. However, Roosevelthad far less good fortune with columnists and editorialists, many of whommade life miserable for Roosevelt. Lippmann brushed awayany fears of a presidential abuse of power and said that the wise thing todo was to give the Administration all the power it needed to cope withcircumstances as they developed. Lippmann was skeptical ofRoosevelt, but he endorsed Roosevelt's sweeping recovery program during thefirst hundred days of the term and much of what followed until the summerof 1935. [13]Walter Lippmann, The New Imperative (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 1. Hesupported Roosevelt when he saw Roosevelt taking charge and dealing withthe Depression, but he changed as he decided that the measures undertakenwere counter-productive in the long run. He said that suchexperiments were rooted in the desire for recovery and not in anyenthusiasm for an authoritarian state or a planned economy. Roosevelt and His Critics, 1933-39 (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 175. Steven Blum refers to the attitude and viewpoint offered byLippmann as "cosmopolitanism," by which he means that Lippmann was a manattuned to international as well as to domestic influences and affairs.This explains much of what Lippmann wrote in his career and also why he wasoften opposed to political leaders he saw as taking too narrow, and tooparochial, an approach. Lippmann decided he needed to know more about the nature of themobilization effort in Europe and went to England in 1939. He commanded no divisions, but he did have an enormous power over public opinion. Fears abounded along the Westcoast that any Japanese person was a spy, and Lippmann saw the region as acombat zone where anyone present had to justify their right to be there.He also managed to twist logic to demonstrate that there would be noabandonment of civil liberties involved because he said all persons were tobe treated alike. [19]Zinn, 96. He said thedanger was that these experiments might give way to more drastic ones andthat this might inhibit the free enterprise on which part of the recoverywould depend: Thus, in January 1934, less than ten months into FDR's first term, Lippmann drew a clear line between recovery and reform, between government action necessary to end the depression and that designed to make fundamental changes in American society. Rather, the planners had to control thepeople: Therefore civilian planning is compelled to presuppose that somehow the despots who climb to power will be benevolent--that is to say, will know and desire the supreme good of their subjects.[21]This was one of the dangers of continuing the New Deal--benevolent despotsmight be found, but they also might not. [21]Ibid., 1 1. What was normal is not reliable. New York: Macmillan, 1935.Smith, Gene. Steven Blum, Walter Lippmann: Cosmopolitanism in the Century ofTotal War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 11. Mencken was one such, and he had alot of help from other columnists such as David Lawrence, Frank Kent, andWestbrook Pegler. Clearly, Lippmann was capable ofchanging his mind, and for all the vigor with which he addressed issues andpromoted his ideas, he was just as likely to change to the oppositeposition as circumstances changed and to pursue that new position with thesame vigor and dedication. Public Philosopher: Selected Letters of Walter Lippmann. The realities ofthe 193 s were quite different than expected, however.[8] Lippmann wrote in a letter to Graham Wallas in 193 , "Poor Hoover isthe victim, although his own political clumsiness has made things very muchworse for himself."[9] Lippmann considered the economic and politicalconsequences of the Depression and sought a philosophy that would leadAmerica out of the dilemmas posed in both sectors. Hoover confronted a central dilemmain American values, the conflict between the tradition of individualism andthe impersonalism of large corporations and cities. He decided then that Great Britain was refusing tobe roused from her torpor and that the appeasement of Hitler was the firststep toward giving him all that he wanted. It was Hoover and not Roosevelt, he averred, that established the precedent for state action on a far more extensive basis than had been seen during previous economic crises.[14] Lippmann told his readers only a week after Roosevelt was inauguratedthat the nation had regained confidence in itself. Walter Lippmann was a syndicated columnist with considerableinfluence. This in turn gave him a power over Presidents, politicians and policymakers.[1]An examination of Lippmann's use of his column to influence public opinionwill show how he made use of his popularity, the sorts of issues that firedhim, and the methods he used to shape policy, especially during the periodof his greatest influence from the New Deal to the Truman presidency. [22]Steel, 374-375. the policyof appeasement was still being suggested by people like Joseph Kennedy andCharles Lindbergh. Hewrote at the time in a letter, We have seen that the curse of great fortunes is the degradation of the poor, that social position is built upon the slum. [17]Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 95-96. Lippmann saidthere were elements of corruption deep down in the electorate and that aleader was needed who could overcome it. He had called for anaccommodation with Japan at any price, and now he rejected this andsupported a hard line toward Tokyo, such as Roosevelt was taking.[24] With the war under way, Lippmann continued to try to spur theAdministration to take actions Lippmann deemed necessary. He was in fact avocal proponent of the internment of the Japanese which has since been seenas a shameful episode in American history. New York: Macmillan, 1934.Lippmann, Walter. Whenever such aplan were implemented, it had to be controlled, yet the people were not ina position to control the plan. Felix Frankfurter was assigned the task of calmingLippmann down, but Lippmann would not be moved, stating that he had notmade the plea for increased presidential authority until he had beensatisfied that Roosevelt would use such authority wisely. [18]George Wolfskill and John A. Hewrote with reference to Roosevelt's supporters: The kind of people who are turning out to support him are a crowd that I do not want to see in power in the United States.[4] D. Steven Blum, 11 . should stay out of the conflict. Lippmann railed against what he sawas "the antiquated and constraining theoretical apparatus of populargovernment in the United States," and he stated that it was "rooted in aludicrous vision of small and self-contained communities."[6] he believedthat traditional democratic ideas were not up to the challenge of the newera that developed first before World War I and then further between thetwo world wars. Many journalists and columnists may aspire to thissort of power, but few achieve it to the degree that Lippmann did.Biographer Ronald Steel writes, Influence was Lippmann's stock-in-trade; was what made him a powerful public figure. One concern expressedby Lippmann at the time was that Americans might be seduced along the samefascist lines as had occurred in Germany, given that the Depression wassapping the national will. He took the nation off the goldstandard. . [3]Steel, 14-15. Lippmann was disillusioned by the reality of planningproduction and shaping the economy through government intervention. He would again support Rooseveltwhen the latter took charge and managed the war, fighting to protect Europeand American interests. Lippmann responded to circumstances as he saw themand to his assessment of how others responded to those circumstances. It was seen in effectas an obituary written while Roosevelt could still read it, for it wasknown that Roosevelt's health was poor. He created the Tennessee Valley Authority. [23]Ibid., 375-376. Roosevelt got Congressto pass the most sweeping economic program in American history during thisfirst three months of his presidency. In doing so, Lippmann was reversinghimself. Roosevelt welcomed Lippmann's support, but he also did not want toantagonize Congress with the sort of fulsome praise Lippmann was offering,as well as with the ideas Lippmann had about the need for a more and morepowerful leader. By this he meant that everyone would have to justifythemselves, but in truth the only citizens who would even be asked would bethose with Japanese ancestry: In other words, he accepted, although refraining from expressing it outright, the argument that all Americans of Japanese ancestry were potential fifth columnists and should be treated as a class apart from other citizens. He created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration tosupport farm prices. He saw this as the first stepleading to a threat to America: The United States could maintain a hands-off policy toward Europe only so long as it was sure that Britain and France could successfully resist Hitler. It seems certain thatLippmann learned much from the great muckraker and took with him a sense ofthe need to challenge authority and right wrongs, though Lippmann didbecome disenchanted with muckraking itself.[2] Lippmann developed a social conscience while studying at Harvard. He watched theexperimentation in planning on the part of Roosevelt with sympathy andskepticism alike, but over time he became more and more certain thatnational economic planning had unforeseen dangers. Can this form of organization, historically associated with military purposes and necessities, be used for the general improvement of men's condition?[19]Lippmann examined the ramifications of civilian planning and found a numberof incalculables involved in the process, indeed so many that the only wayan economy could be planned with any good effect was when there was ascarcity to the degree that the necessities of existence could be rationed: "A planned production to meet a free demand is a contradiction in termsand as meaningless as a square circle."[2 ] He also found planning on thisscale to be incompatible with free and voluntary labor. [9]John Morton Blum, Public Philosopher: Selected Letters of WalterLippmann (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1985), 265. It was simply too much of a riskto take. Walter Lippmann and the American Century. But if they should be defeated, America itself would become vulnerable to Nazi power.[22]This became more clear in ensuing months as Hitler sent troops into Prague. He said that Woodrow Wilson had never explained why the U.S.entered the First World War. He wrote his column for over 4 years, and it appeared inleading newspapers in the United States and throughout the world, goinginto semiretirement in 1967, leaving a number of readers who had longdepended on his column without an important part of their lives. The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Publishers were angry that theAdministration had tried to impose a code on newspapers, which they saw asa blow to freedom of the press, though it was aimed at such things asminimum wages, maximum hours, and restrictions against the employment ofchildren.[18] Lippmann's reason for opposing the New Deal was quite different, ofcourse. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1985.Blum, D. Steven. Walter Lippmann: Cosmopolitanism in the Century of Total War. New Deal Thought. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.----------------------- [1]Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York:Random House, 198 ), xv. [16]Steel, 3 7. Five days later Roosevelt died.Lippmann had influenced the 193 s through his columns and had been both asupporter and an antagonist to Roosevelt. Rooseveltduring the first years of the New Deal. Neitherdid Lippmann publicly criticize Kennedy, though he also saw him as pro-Naziand anti-Semitic.[23] A debate over isolationism ensued for several months, and nowLippmann was exhorting Roosevelt to do something to show that the securityof the United States was at stake and tightly bound with the fate of GreatBritain. The Crossroads of Liberalism. Lippmann's greatest work and his strongest effortto influence policymakers came in the years between the two world wars.Blum explains, Lippmann's thinking can be understood effectively in terms of his evolving search, spanning the period of the world Wars, for a cosmopolitan philosophy responsive to twentieth-century problems.[5]Blum also finds that the political thought expressed by Lippmann throughouthis career derived from his broadside against democratic theory and thefunctioning of American democracy. Even had hestill held pacifist views, the acts of cruelty being perpetrated by theNazis would probably have changed his view, and indeed news of theseatrocities did fuel his calls for action. . Steven Blum, 111-112. Roosevelt and His Critics, 1933-39. For all hiscarping against those he saw as isolationists, he himself was anisolationist as far as the beginning of the war was concerned. The Method of Freedom. New York: William Morrow, 197 .Steel, Ronald. He thoughtthe U.S. The difference between journalist andcolumnist is important, for a journalist reports on the news while acolumnist by definition comments on the news and presumably tries to shapeit by altering and martialing public opinion. The war was an opportunity for both men to changeand to achieve more through that change: As it allowed FDR to turn away from a stymied New Deal and a depression that would not go away, so it provided Lippmann with an escape from the sterile negativism of his anti-New Deal diatribes and allowed him to concentrate on the great issues of war and peace. The influence was tangible, but hard to measure. [24]Ibid., 39 -391. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.Forcey, Charles. Hemade an analogy between exerting maximum military power in wartime and theexerting of the sort of concentrated power involved in the New Deal: The question we must now consider is whether a system which is essential to the conduct of war can be adapted to the civilian ideal of peace and plenty. This wasaccomplished in the first 1 days of the Administration, which is whyother presidents ever since have been measured against this accomplishmentover the same time period in their administrations. Once the panic had been stemmed by Roosevelt's decisiveness and the innovations of the first hundred days, Lippmann ceased talking of "dictatorial powers." What he would grant in an emergency, he would take away once the emergency had passed.[16] Lippmann had argued in 1929 in his book A Preface to Morals that theera of laissez-faire was over, and clearly the Roosevelt era only bolsteredthis conviction. He launched this battle in the 192 sand revised it throughout his career. If it took the war to make Roosevelt a truly great President, so the same war, and the cold war that followed, made Lippmann the nation's preeminent analyst of foreign affairs.[26] Lippmann would continue in his role as supporter of some causes andgadfly to others with the Truman Administration and would remain at hispost until the Johnson Administration. [11]Gene Smith, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the GreatDepression (New York: William Morrow, 197 ), 55-59. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.Lippmann, Walter. The ideas ofKeynes meshed with Lippmann's own preference for a political theory thatfavored vigorous but limited government while also placing a brake onchangeable public opinion. In the work of uplifting we cannot do too much.[3]Lippmann would be a major critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and of theNew Deal, and his disaffection with the Roosevelts actually began when hewas still at Harvard and decided he could not support Theodore Roosevelt ina second bid for the presidency and instead supported Woodrow Wilson. [26]Ibid., 417.----------------------- 1 He found theBritish preparing for an inevitable war, while back in the U.S. To a degree, he had helped get the provisions of the New Dealpassed through Congress by beating the drum for these measures in hiscolumn. H.L. They were pleased with thenew president, after the lean years with Coolidge and Hoover, for Rooseveltheld frequent press conferences and charmed the press. He saw the possibility of widespread disorderthroughout society: The things that were certain have become uncertain. When Lippmann becamebored with the job, he became Steffens's secretary. Events half-way across the globe nowaffected America directly as they did not in earlier times, and Lippmannbelieved that the American people were ill-prepared to abandon theirtraditional isolationism, parochialism, and xenophobia: His overriding concerns were, first, that the citizenry become more fully cognizant of its integration in a complicated international system of relationships, and second, that it recognize the enrichment that could devolve from mature adjustment to these realities, from intensified exposure to ideas and experiences outside the perimeters of everyday existence.[7] The Depression created a dilemma for Lippmann as his politicalthinking came into conflict with the problems of the time. [14]D. Lippmann believed that the economic hardshipfacing the country could be eased if some apparatus existed for neutralizing the proliferation of discrete private interests besetting democratic society.[12] These views led Lippmann to be a supporter of Franklin D. The inertia of men, which in settled times makes for stubborn resistance to novelty, becomes a fatalistic acceptance of change; they surrender easily to the mere turmoil of affairs, and open the gates of the city to the first barbarian who comes demanding admittance in a sufficiently loud voice.[1 ] Herbert Hoover was the president who presided at the beginning of theDepression and who was undone by it. He first reorganized the banks andcreated the Civilian Conservation Corps. Hebelieved that they were clinging desperately and mistakenly to outmodedeconomic formulas. Lippmannhad a strong influence on various presidents and political leaders, and hemade use of this influence to try to shape policy and influence decision-making in government. He saw instead a need for the compensated economy andbelieved that the case had been made for it in the practice of both HerbertHoover and Roosevelt, though the two seemed opposites: Hoover's term differed from Roosevelt's not because it eschewed government oversight of the economy generally, but because of the type and degree of intervention it advocated. Lippmannwrote that it was obvious that government must henceforth hold itself consciously responsible for the maintenance of the standard of life prevailing among the people.[13]Lippmann argued against the diehard champions of nonintervention, much ashe had railed against isolationists on the international scene. It was a rationale the Nazis could have used about the Jews.[25] For all his quarrels with Roosevelt, after Yalta and the end of thewar in Europe Lippmann wrote a column praising him. [25]Ibid., 394. The New Imperative. This was in keeping with the mainstream of progressivethought in the early 2 th Century.[11] Hoover's positions would seem to beat odds with the developing attitude of Lippmann that the unfettereddemocracy was at fault for many of the woes facing the country. Hudson, All But the People: FranklinD. The growing tensions in the Eastalso signaled a change in response from Lippmann. They were aided by a number of publisherswho also fought back at the attempt through the National Recovery Act tobring order to chaotic business conditions. He felt that again Americans did not understand what was atstake. He startedas a reporter for the Boston Common, a new reformist newspaper, a decisionmade with the help of the muckraker Lincoln Steffens. Lippmann did not criticize the popular Lindbergh at thetime, but he considered him a "Nazi-lover" and would later say so. He became moreconservative late in the 193 s.[17] During the New Deal period, Roosevelt maintained friendly relationswith the working people in the newspaper field. Roosevelt, for his part, wieldedthe authority he did have and pushed through Congress a succession ofmeasures to restore economic stability. He had presumeddiminished domestic discord, a possible end to war, a unanimity of moralpurpose, and a flowering of cosmopolitanism in the world. [1 ]Walter Lippmann, The Method of Freedom (New York: Macmillan, 1934),11-12. He had once been enamored of Socialism, but he had becomedisillusioned with the planned society it envisioned. He also seemed to feel guilty for supportingthe failed policies of disarmament following World War I, and he vowed thathe would never again argue for neutrality or disarmament. . Steel writes, Lippmann backed the entire package, swallowing every one of his earlier strictures about government intervention in the economy.[15] Lippmann would change his views again, eventually challenging the NewDeal and most of its prescriptions for economic change and control. In time, Walter Lippmann would join them to wage arelentless war on the New Deal. Hecreated an agency to protect investors from stock-market frauds. [2]Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1961), 1 1-1 4. His influence may have depended on the positionhe took and the circumstances prevailing at the time, but his influencewould increase with time as he became the established expert in foreignaffairs, a man whose word was watched for what it would say aboutpolicymaking. [4]Ibid., 97-98. Hudson, All But the People: Franklin D. [12]D. In theeconomic sphere, Lippmann envisioned a "compensated economy" that would becapable of stabilizing the extreme economic shifts of the postwar period bymeans of a delicate balance of government action and private initiative, aconception in which he was influenced by John Maynard Keynes. When Lippmann decided not tobecome a professor, he then trained himself to be a journalist. Hestarted his life as a journalist before the First World War and wouldcontinue writing into the Vietnam War era some 5 years later. . New York: Random House, 198 .Wolfskill, George and John A. He sent afarm credit bill to Congress along with the National Recovery Act, whichsuspended antitrust laws to encourage industry-wide planning. [2 ]Ibid., 99. Lippmann was vocal about the impending war as well. are most readily credulous of new faiths. BIBLIOGRAPHYBlum, John Morton. In his daily newspaper column he argued that there was aninescapable necessity for the new scale of government involvement ineconomic life, a clear support for the New Deal to that time. The two had never been close,and Lippmann's influence was not brought about by being socially engagedwith the leadership. [6]Ibid., 13. Hoover believed in theworth of the individual, the value of personal initiative, the rights ofself-expression, and the legacy of freedom of opportunity, and hisphilosophy was deeply rooted in his personal Quaker faith.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
We can write a Custom Essay just for you.
Browse Essays by Subject