I think I would have liked the 18th century if I had been one of the people privileged to enjoy it.
—Walter Lippmann, 1969 He could have held his own in an 18th century salon or coffeehouse, spar ring civilly with the prophets of the Enlightenment. His faith in the dispassion ate application of reason to the muddle of human affairs was no less firm than Voltaire's. His prowess at drawing his tory's sweep from the minutiae of daily events might have impressed even Gibbon. Had they discoursed on politics, he and Edmund Burke would have found themselves on the same aloof Olympian plane.
An author, editor, columnist and diplomatic historian, he lectured statesmen and private citizens for 60 years. Although he relinquished his syndicated column Today and Tomorrow in 1967, he remained a close observer of world events. When he died last week at 85, he left the unfinished manuscript of his 27th book. Its working title, The Ungovernability of Man, reflected another, different 18th century strain in his character, an occasional Swiftian despair at the aberrations of the "minor Dark Age" into which he had been born.
Genteel Socialist. He was the only child of affluent German-Jewish parents (his father was a successful clothing manufacturer in New York City). Walter's early memories were of brownstone comforts, horse-and-buggy rides through Central Park, frequent trips to Europe. He entered Harvard with the class of 1910. There he absorbed William James' challenge to test all hand-me-down truths against the pragmatic standards of experience and reason.
Lippmann left Cambridge a genteel Socialist, worked for a year on Lincoln Steffens' muckraking Everybody's Magazine. His first book, A Preface to Politics, was written after he served a brief stint as secretary to the Rev. George R. Lunn of Schenectady, N.Y., one of America's first Socialist mayors. But no dogma could contain Lippmann for long. He soon abandoned Socialism—but not all of its causes—and in 1914 became one of the founders of the liberal New Republic.
During the war years, Lippmann left journalism briefly to serve as a member of "the Inquiry," a clandestine group of theorists charged by President Wilson with drawing up terms of an acceptable peace. The young adviser helped formulate Wilson's Fourteen Points and prepared a commentary on the peace terms to clarify them for the Allies. But Lippmann was disillusioned by the Versailles Treaty, believing that the conditions it imposed would inexorably lead to another war. He returned briefly to the New Republic, and then in 1921 signed on as an editorial writer for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.