Ronald Steel Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Was it by chance that you came to write the definitive biography of Walter Lippmann?
It was a bit by chance, because I had written two books on foreign policy in the late 1960s. The first was called The End of Alliance about America in Europe, which took a long time to come true, but it seems to be coming true now. The other was Pax Americana, which was a critique of American policy in Europe, and it came when the Vietnam War was getting very controversial, so it dealt with that, too. It dealt with America's global policies.
Then I was trying to decide what kind of book I wanted to do next. Walter Lippmann had just retired. Of course, he was so influential on people my age and many others as an interpreter of American politics and particularly American foreign policy, and I'd been very influenced by him. I'd lived in Europe for about the previous four years, and it was through him that I came to understand what was going on with regard to America's role in the world. He became very critical of the Vietnam War around 1965, which is fairly early, even though he was considered very much an "establishment" figure.
In any case, when I came back, I had the opportunity to have access to him, and I wanted to use him as a springboard for writing about the Cold War.
He gave you access to all his papers?
Well, what happened was, I thought I was going to write about Lippmann and the Cold War; I thought it was going to be just a purely intellectual book. But I got on with him very well, and he had been pressed by his publisher to write his autobiography, which he didn't want to do. So this gradually turned into a biography. It happened bit by bit.
Was there an agreement that you would not publish the biography until after his death?
No, that's not true.
That's not true.
No, actually, Lippmann was amazingly generous. He turned over all his private papers to me, which were voluminous, and gave me not only unrestricted access to them, but I could use them in any way I wanted to. He had no veto power, which was amazingly interesting for somebody he didn't even know, because many of these papers were personal. [But] it took me so long to write this book that Lippmann died before I finished.
I see. How many years did it take you?
About eight. He died about two years before I finished. In all frankness, I was rather relieved, because there were things in the book that I think he wouldn't have been entirely happy with -- my comments about some judgments he had made. [Although] I certainly intended the book as being admiring, and I did admire him a lot, I didn't agree with him on a number of things.
What did you learn about him that surprised you when it came to foreign policy? Lippmann, we should tell our audience, for the younger people who may not know, was a distinguished man of letters who, as both a columnist and an editor, was extremely influential in defining public opinion, elite public opinion, about foreign policy for sixty or seventy years.
What surprised me as I did the research was how deeply involved he had been with politicians. He knew everybody, and because of the enormous influence he had, he was able to maintain an access to people, an influence over their presentation to the world that doesn't exist today. Nobody has that kind of prominence that Lippmann had. There's no single person who is considered a great authority overshadowing all others.
He was very much involved in the whole policy process, and I was stunned to discover that he had done things when he was younger, which is to say, in the 1930s, when he was in his forties and fifties, he was writing campaign speeches for presidential candidates, for example, advising them. He wrote a speech for Senator Vandenburg which paved the way for the American entry into the United Nations. He wasn't just a commentator, he was very involved. So that was surprising.
Also, the other thing about him was he did have great independence of mind, because he ultimately fought with every president when they came into office, even though he greatly admired them.
And he was with the Wilson party that went to the Versailles Treaty?
Yes. He had been an editor at this new magazine called The New Republic right after college and during the early years of [World War I]. When the United States entered the war, he went to France to write propaganda. He became attached to Wilson's aide, Colonel House, and he knew Wilson. So he was briefly on the fringes of the Paris Peace Conference. But then he got in a big fight with some of the people on the commission, and returned to the states about the time that Wilson made his presentation of the peace plan to the Congress. And having ardently supported Wilson and Wilson's decision to take the United States into World War I, he then led the fight against Wilson's policies, and even against American participation in the League of Nations and Senate approval of the treaty.
Now, the way an influential columnist influences foreign policy today is quite different.
It's very hard to measure the influence of writers on foreign policy, even the most influential columnist. When we say influential, we have to be careful that what we mean is not that they're persuasive with regard to the public official. The public official is going to do what he wants to do, if he possibly can, and will look on the columnist either as an aid to getting what he wants or as an impediment. Where the columnist can have influence is over the audience.
Lippmann had a great influence over the audience, and I think there are TV people today, for example, or even print columnists, who have a big role in shaping how their readers or their viewers feel about a public issue. The president or senator or whatever has to take that power into account. That's why these people have influence. They have to be persuaded or be courted, and they have special access. If you can determine how a significant body of voters is going to feel about an issue, then you have power, regardless of whether the official agrees with you or not.
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