The Columnist as Economist
Duke
University economic historian Craufurd Goodwin has written, but probably too
lengthy, biography of the preeminent columnist Walter Lippmann’s writings. However, it is not a biography of Lippmann.
Although he focuses on Lippmann’s “Today and Tomorrow” columns from the early
1930s through the 1960s, he takes up his earlier writings and books along the
way.
What the book
brings out is Lippmann’s grappling with the economic crisis of the Great
Depression. In column after column Lippmann is concerned about the economic
collapse and the tragedy of mass unemployment that comes with it. For the most
part Lippmann gets it right. Early on he is against the gold standard, for a
flexible monetary policy and for free trade. Lippmann is an anti-monopolist to
the core and it explains his opposition to the National Recovery Act. Lippmann,
a friend of Keynes since the Versailles Conference of 1919, brings his ideas to
the American public.
In column
after column Lippmann is a true believer in both Keynesian Economics and the
competitive market system. In the case of the latter, that makes him an
anti-New Dealer and for that conservatives flock to him. One of the lessons for
today is that in the 1930s both Lippmann and Keynes urged that economic
recovery should take precedent over economic reforms. Would that President
Obama follow that important advice in 2009-10.
Walter
Lippmann stopped writing in 1967 and died in 1974 just as the Keynesian
consensus was collapsing. One wonders what how he would have responded to the
stagflation of the 1970s. Unfortunately Goodwin is silent on this question.
For Amazon URL see:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R35G2TITDK11A5
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