The Phantom Public (Library of Conservative Thought)

Rating:
Summary: What The American People Want
Review: Television is crowded with politicians and journalists who assume that it is possible to divine the public interest. Even as they claim to be acting on its behalf, they simultaneously believe that the public directs the course of events.

Lippmann argues that the idea of the public and the public interest are both convenient fictions. They are phantoms, amorphous ideas which refer to nothing in particular. In the first half of the book, he describes the fallacies and failures of these fictions. In the second half, he offers general but objective principles to use in defining the function and limitations of public opinion. In the footsteps of Aristotle, he attempts "to find a way of acting effectively upon highly complex affairs by very simple means."

Lippman discovers fundamental contrasts which get to the heart of many of the problems of modern democracy, in the political world, but also in the business world. One vital distinction is between insiders and outsiders, between the agents in an action who do specific things and between the bystanders who try to command general results - those who act and those who give orders. This contrast speaks not only to the relationship of voters to elected representatives, but also of employees to employers, agents to administrators, and any particular issue or event to the general public. The contrast raises the practical question of where to locate the center of authority.

For Lippmann it is a fallacy that popular will governs America. At best, people align themselves, as groups, with one side of the real actors in an issue. It is impossible for some ideal, omnicompetent voter to know everything which is asked of him, to absorb all information about all issues of the day. There is neither the time nor the interest nor the capacity to do so. The argument is more persuasive when one considers Lippman was writing it in 1925. If it was true then, it is certainly more true today.

I found The Phantom Public to be refreshingly original and precise. It is almost unbelievable that a journalist could have written it. Lippmann took ancient, foundational questions - philosophical questions-and made them seem new. Time has not darkened his judgments.