Walter Lippmann, a progressive journalist, co-founder of The New Republic, and a power within the Wilson administration, had been among those who pressured Wilson to take the nation to war. During the war he worked at the Creel Committee, and witnessed firsthand its power to whip the country into a fanatical assent. Despite his own initial support for the war, the ease with which the Creel Committee had succeeded turned him into something of a lifelong cynic.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 164