Walter Lippmann — City and State Government in the New York World

1. 1. Lippmann saw Al Smith's urban-liberal governance as a successful model of modern democracy, resolving the paradox of public opinion in a modern state.
2. 2. Lippmann argued that Smith's urban liberalism was not municipal socialism but a conservative form of progressive governance that maintained stability and property rights.
3. 3. Lippmann's editorial work at the New York World promoted Smith's vision of a Democratic Party that fused urban machines with progressive reformers to build a liberal mass party.
4. 4. Lippmann viewed the 1920s culture wars, such as the Scopes trial, as conflicts between urban and rural America that distracted from substantive issues.
5. 5. Lippmann's A Preface to Morals (1929) argued that modernization, driven by urbanization, inexorably dissolved traditional beliefs and produced liberal, tolerant citizens.
6. 6. Lippmann's urban liberalism excluded non-white Americans, as the World argued Smith's candidacy broadened the white European immigrant base of the nation.
7. 7. After Smith's 1928 defeat, Lippmann continued to believe urban liberals were the wave of the future, but the Great Depression and rise of totalitarianism shifted his focus to law and constitutionalism.
8. 8. Lippmann's work at the New York World anticipated Cold War modernization theory, which saw urbanization, liberalism, and democracy as inexorably linked.