Walter Lippmann and the American Century — 6 Reputation

1. 1. Herbert Croly invited Walter Lippmann to join the staff of a new magazine, the New Republic, funded by Willard and Dorothy Straight.
2. 2. The New Republic was designed to be radical but not socialistic, pragmatic rather than doctrinaire, and aimed at a public-spirited elite.
3. 3. Lippmann believed influence came from reaching people whose opinions mattered, not from converting the masses, and he cultivated older, powerful men like Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Theodore Roosevelt.
4. 4. Theodore Roosevelt was Lippmann's model of a statesman, the first president who understood that the United States had become a world power and that national stability required deliberate effort.
5. 5. Lippmann drafted a labor platform for Theodore Roosevelt in 1914, advocating for a minimum wage and strong unions as the best hope for industrial democracy.
6. 6. In Drift and Mastery, Lippmann argued that unions were essential to prevent a class structure imperiled by insurrection, and he despised scabs as traitors to democracy.
7. 7. Lippmann believed that reputation was essential for a writer on public affairs because it allowed him to meet the people necessary to understand the world.
8. 8. Graham Wallas dedicated his book The Great Society to Lippmann and began it with an open letter to him, gently critiquing his anti-intellectualism.
9. 9. Lippmann met H. G. Wells at the National Liberal Club and was in awe of him, later signing Rebecca West to write for the New Republic.
10. 10. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 shattered Lippmann's world and turned his focus to foreign affairs, which became a lifelong preoccupation.
11. 11. Lippmann considered Graham Wallas the greatest teacher he ever knew and credited him with enabling his understanding of the human problems of the Great Society.