Lippmann, Walter (1889–1974)

FOR OVER 60 YEARS, Walter Lippmann was one of America's most influential political commentators. As a journalist, his work influenced every president from Woodrow Wilson to Richard Nixon. Lippmann was born in Manhattan, New York City, and was an only child to privileged German-Jewish parents. He attended Harvard University where he studied philosophy and completed a four-year degree in three years.

His journalistic career lasted 35 years, and he authored 21 books. Lippmann was an associate editor of the New Republic from 1914 to 1917. He left this position to become an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. As Wilson's assistant secretary of war, Lippmann had much influence over the president, especially with regards to Wilson's famous 14 Points, which formed the U.S. position at the Versailles Treaty concluding the war. Lippmann left his position with the president and became an editor for the New York World from 1921 to 1931. His journalistic career expanded to include writing for the New York Herald Tribune and gaining a national audience. His writing would continue through to the height of the Vietnam War, until he finally put his pen down for good in 1967 and retired at the age of 78.

One of Lippmann's main liberal contributions was his groundbreaking work on propaganda and the American public, especially during times of war. He believed that the public could be easily manipulated and that the masses often had difficulty in seeing the difference between the world around them and their perception of the world. In most cases, he believed people tended to respond more to fictions that they believe to be reality, than to actual reality.

Lippmann never simply followed party lines and always wrote based on his beliefs and feelings. While noted as a liberal thinker, he would change throughout his career from representing socialist-liberal views to conservative views. He would condemn American foreign policy in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and attack American policy with regards to McCarthyism and Harry Truman's role in increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union.

In 1947, he published The Cold War, in which he criticized Truman's containment policy against the Soviet Union. He faced initial criticism from historians who, like Truman, believed that the Soviets had expansionist intentions. However, he has recently been the beneficiary of new studies that justify his early Cold War claims and further support Lippmann's place as one of America's most influential, important and insightful journalists.

For all of his great contributions, Lippmann was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1958 and 1962, for his syndicated column, Today and Tomorrow. He was also awarded honorary degrees from 19 different universities. He is best remembered for his amazing ability to foresee the long-term outcomes of American foreign policy, a quality that eluded many of the presidents that he wrote about. Lippmann died in December 1974.