In the years that preceded the publication of The Good Society, Walter Lippmann did not seem a likely advocate for freemarket ideas. He had become known early in his career, through both his books and his longtime association with the New Republic, as an advocate of scientifi c management and interventionary economic policies. Having helped arrange the serialization of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in the New Republic more than a de cade earlier, Lippmann maintained a close friendship with John Maynard Keynes that he later recalled as “one of the happiest of my life.” And after a period of initial skepticism, he had openly embraced Franklin Roo se velt’s economic program, telling him in the period between the election and the inauguration that he “may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers” and vigorously advocating the policies of the early New Deal. Lippmann’s only link to economic conservatism was through a recent institutional affi liation: in the fall of 1931 his career as executive editor of the New York World concluded with the newspaper’s demise, and he accepted a new position as a columnist at the staunchly Republican New York Herald Tribune.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 151