Sublime

Crystallizing Public Opinion

Before the convention, Lyndon Johnson had been almost universally portrayed as an enormously powerful and influential figure in the Democratic Party. By the end of the convention, it had become obvious that that portrait was overdrawn. His image as a brilliant political strategist had also been smudged. “Lyndon Johnson’s reputation as an uncommonly

This is not unique to the federal government. It happens in all, particularly large, organizations. Expertise has this inherent defect. But in the federal government, the problem is the size of the defect.

Plato said those who tell the stories rule society and he was right.

The key question for Lippmann wasn’t whether the average person was intelligent enough to make decisions about public policy; it was whether the average person could ever know enough to choose intelligently.

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. —WALTER LIPPMANN, The Stakes of Diplomacy

You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.

This vision is all very nice. All very noble. And all very crazy. Which brings us to the third great foreign policy school: realism. The realist looks at this great liberal project and sees a hopeless illusion.