The Library of Conservative Thought Russell Kirk, Series Editor Burke Street, by George Scott-Moncrieff. THE PHANTOM PUBLIC The Gase for Conservatism, by Francis Graham Wilson. Collected Letters ofJohn Randolph to John Brockenbrough, 1812-1833, edited by Kenneth Shorey. A Critical Examination of Socialism, by William Hurrell Mallock. EdmundBurke: Appraisals andApplications, WALTER LIPPMANN edited by Daniel E. Ritchie. Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution, by Peter J. Stanlis. The Essential Calhoun, by John C. Calhoun, edited by Clyde N. Wilson. The God of the Machine, by Isabel Paterson. With a New Introduction A Historian and His World, A Life of Christopher Dawson 1889-1970, by Wilfred M. McClay by Christina Scott. I Chose Freedom, by Victor A. Kravchenko. I Chose Justice, by Victor A. Kravchenko. On Divorc-e, by Louis de Bonald. Orestes Brownson: Selected Political Essays, edited by Russell Kirk. The Phantom Public, by Walter Lippmann. GI l,e Politics of the Center, Juste Milieu in Theory and Practice, France and Transaction Publishers England, 1815-1848, by Vincent E. Starzinger. New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.) Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States, by Donald Davidson. The Social Crisis of Our Time, by Wilhelm Roepke. Copyright © 1993 by Transaetion Publishers, New Bruns­ wiek, New Jersey 08903. Originally published in 1927 by The Maemillan Company. All rights reserved under International and Pan-Ameriean Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be repro­ dueed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronie or mechanieal, including photocopy, reeording, or any infor­ TO mation storage and retrleval system, without prior permission LEARNED HAND in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be ad­ dressed to Transaetion Publishers, Rutgers-The State Uni­ versity, New Btunswiek, New Jersey 08903. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 92-41593 ISBN: 1-56000-677-3 Printed in the United States of Ameriea '- .. '" Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data Lippmann, Walter, 1889-1974 The phantom public I Walter Lippman ; with a new intro­ duction by Wilfred M. McClay p. cm. - (Library of conservative thought) Originally published: New York: Macmillan Co., 1927 Includes bibliographical referenees and index. ISBN 1-56000-677-3 1. Public opinion. 2. Political seienee. I. Title. 11. Series. HM261.L74 1993 303.3 '8-dc20 92-41593 CIP "The roiee of the People has been said to be the rJoiee of God: and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in faet."-Alexander Hamilton, June 18, 1787, at the Federal Con­ vention (Yates's notes, cited Sourees and Doeuments Illu,strating the Ameriean Revolution, edited by S. G. Morison). ". • • eonsider 'Government by Public Opinion' as a formula. It is an admirable formula: but it presupposes, not only that publie opinion exists, but that on any partieular question there is a publie opinion ready to deeide the issue. 1ndeed, it presupposes that the su­ preme stati!sman in demoeratic government is public opinion. Many of the shorteomings of demoeratie government are due to the fact that public opinion is not necessarily a great statesman at all."-From "Some Thoughts on Public Life," a lecture by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, February 3, 1923. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION .............. XI PART I CHAPTER PAGE I. THE DISENCHANTED MAN ............................................ 3 II. THE UNATTAINABLE IDEAL ............................................ 12 III. AGENTS AND BYSTANDERS .............................................. 30 IV. WHAT THE PUBLIC DOES ............................................... 44 V. THE NEUTRALIZATION OF ARBITRARY FORCE ...... 53 PART II VI. THE QUESTION AruSTOTLE ASKED ............................ 67 VII. THE NATURE OF A PROBLEM ........................................ 71 VIII. SOCIAL CONTRACTS .......................................................... 85 ' ,.'" IX. THE Two QUESTIONS BEFORE THE PUBLIC ......... 97 X. THE MAIN V ALUE OF PUBLIC DEBATE .................... 100 XI. THE DEFECTIVE RULE ..................................................... 105 XII. THE CRITERIA OF REFORM ............................................ 115 XIII. THE PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC OPINION ....................... 133 PARTIlI XIV. SOCIETY IN ITS PLACE ...................................................... 145 XV. ABSENTEE RULERS .............................................................. 163 XVI. THE REALMS OF DISORDER ........................................... 177 INDEX ....................................................................................... 191 INTRODUCTIONTO THE TRANSACTION EDITION IN THE nearly two decades since his death in 1974, Walter Lippmann and his works can hardly be said to have suffered an eclipse or a fall into obscurity. On the contrary; a fairly wide selection of that master journalist's book-Iength studies have continued in print, ranging from his early Progressive mani­ festo, Drift and Mastery (1914) and his crit­ ical understanding of the dilemmas of information dissemination in a modern de­ mocracy, Public Opinion (1922), to his later attempt to articulate and counteract the maladies of democracyin The Public Philos­ ophy (1955), aH readily available in inexpen­ sive editions, still widely read and respected in a variety of fields. In addition, the publi­ cation of Ronald Steel's well-received 1980 biography of Lippmann and John Morton Blum's selection of Lippmann's correspon­ dence have further stimulated and sus- xi xii THE PHANTOM PUBLIC TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION xiii tained interest in Lippmann and his oeuvre, conversation-stopper. Even if Francis as have the important and thoughtful recent Fukuyama is right in asserting that all the intellectual biographies of his contemporar­ ideological alternatives to liberal democracy ies Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey, with in our time have been exhausted-and that whose careers Lippmann's intersected im­ is surely a temporary state of affairs, at portantly.l most-an awareness of the pathologies of Given such interest, Transaction's wel­ democracy suggests a continuing need for come decision to bring back into print many frequent and sustained democratic self-crit­ of Lippmann's distinguished works reflects icism.2 Although the gloomy and demythol­ a more general intellectual engagement ogized view of democracy found in The Phan­ with his work that is not likely to slacken tom Public is hardly likely to convert anytime soon. Indeed, there is good reason mainstream public opinion-such a develop­ to think that Lippmann's work may come to ment being unlikely virtually by defini­ be seen as more, rather than less, important tion-it preserves a serious and distinctive and influential in the years to come. As intellectual option, one that is not without Americans continue to struggle with the considerable sympathetic resonances and prospects and problems of their experiment precursors in the American past. As the his­ in mass democracy, Lippmann's fearless torian Daniel Walker Howe has pointed out, criticism of modern American democracy Lippmann may be seen in many respects as may serve as an increasingly valuable intel­ standing squarely in the intellectual tradi­ lectual touchstone in contemporary debate, tion of the American Whigs.3 And the first where the disparaging term "elitist" has too epigraph of The Phantom Public, which rid­ often served as the ultimate trump card and icules the adage \UX populi, vox dei, suggests xiv THE PHANTOM PUBLIC TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION xv an even more influential intellectual pro­ cal acuity and complete eschewal of moral venance: the antidemocratic skepticism of posturing should forestall any dismissive Alexander Hamilton, and the antidemotic charge against him of self-interested elit­ fears of so many of the continental-minded ism, moss-backed crankishness, or crypto­ men who drafted and campaigned for the legitimism. As those who have read Public D.S. Constitution.4 Opinion can attest, Lippmann's discussion Such historical continuity is not in itself a of stereotypes and propaganda in the mod­ sufficient argument for Lippmann's import­ ern mass-communications media, written at ance. But the astonishing contemporary rel­ a time when radio was in its infancy and evance of much of his work iso Sentences and television little more than a pipedream, has paragraphs out of The Phantom Public could hardly been improved upon by seven be lifted, unchanged, out oftheircontext and decades' worth of subsequent writers, a ver­ be republished on the editorial pages of one itable army of scribblers which had the ad­ of today's great American newspapers, vantage of observing those media in fuH where they might weIl win a Pulitzer for the operation. plagiarist intrepid enough to appropriate The Phantom Public is arguably an even them. (For instance, the book's first nine more valuable text, precisely because it was pages, which comprise a chapter entitled perhaps the clearest, pithiest, and most fuU­ "The Disenchanted Man," can easily be throated expression of Lippmann's crystal­ mined for observations that seem to speak lizing skepticism. Perhaps it was for that directly to the discontent, and non-voting very reason that The Phantom Public disap­ behavior, of the American electorate circa peared from print so rapidly, and has re­ 1992.) Moreover, Lippmann's cool, analyti- mained so until now. Though it was accept- xvi THE PHANTOM PUBLIC TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION xvii able, and even amusing, for