The Press: Lippmann: Philosopher-Journalist
出版社：李普曼：哲學家-記者

I think I would have liked the 18th century if I had been one of the people privileged to enjoy it.
我認為如果我是那些有特權享受 18 世紀的人之一，我會喜歡那個時代。

—Walter Lippmann, 1969 He could have held his own in an 18th century salon or coffeehouse, spar ring civilly with the prophets of the Enlightenment. His faith in the dispassion ate application of reason to the muddle of humanaffairs was no less firm than Voltaire’s. His prowess at drawing his tory’s sweep from the minutiae of daily events might have impressed even Gibbon. Had they discoursed on politics, he and Edmund Burke would have foundthemselves on the same aloof Olympian plane.
—華特·李普曼，1969 他本可以在十八世紀的沙龍或咖啡館中與啟蒙時代的先知們文明辯論。他對於冷靜運用理性處理混亂人類事務的信念，不亞於伏爾泰。他從日常瑣事中勾勒歷史脈絡的精湛技藝，甚至可能讓吉朋也印象深刻。若他們討論政治，他與埃德蒙·伯克將會發現彼此處於同一個超然的奧林匹亞平臺。

An author, editor, columnist and diplomatic historian, he lectured statesmen and private citizens for 60 years. Although he relinquished his syndicated column Today and Tomorrow in 1967, he remained a close observer of world events. When he died last week at 85, he left the unfinished manuscript of his 27th book. Its working title, The Ungovernability of Man, reflected another, different 18th century strain in his character, an occasional Swiftian despair at the aberrations of the “minor Dark Age” into which he had been born.
一位作家、編輯、專欄作家和外交史學家，他為政治家和普通民眾講學達 60 年之久。雖然他在 1967 年放棄了其聯合專欄《今日與明日》，但他仍密切關注世界事態。上週他去世時享年 85 歲，留下未完成的第 27 本書手稿。該書的工作標題為《人的難以治理》，反映了他性格中另一種不同的 18 世紀情懷，偶爾對他所出生的「小黑暗時代」的異常現象感到斯威夫特式的絕望。

Genteel Socialist. He was the only child of affluent German-Jewish parents (his father was a successful clothing manufacturer in New York City). Walter’s early memories were of brownstone comforts, horse-and-buggy rides through Central Park, frequent trips to Europe. He entered Harvard with the class of 1910. There he absorbed William James’ challenge to test all hand-me-down truths against the pragmatic standards of experience and reason.
文雅的社會主義者。他是富裕的德裔猶太父母唯一的兒子（他的父親是紐約市一位成功的服裝製造商）。沃爾特的早期記憶是褐砂石豪宅的舒適、乘坐馬車穿越中央公園、以及頻繁的歐洲之旅。他於 1910 年入讀哈佛大學。在那裡，他接受了威廉·詹姆斯的挑戰，即用經驗和理性的實用標準來檢驗所有傳承下來的真理。

Lippmann left Cambridge a genteel Socialist, worked for a year on Lincoln Steffens’ muckraking Everybody’s Magazine. His first book, A Preface to Politics, was written after he served a brief stint as secretary to the Rev. George R. Lunn of Schenectady, N.Y., one of America’s first Socialist mayors. But no dogma could contain Lippmann for long. He soon abandoned Socialism—but not all of its causes—and in 1914 became one of the founders of the liberal New Republic.
李普曼離開劍橋時是一位溫文儒雅的社會主義者，曾在林肯·斯蒂芬斯的揭弊雜誌《每人之雜誌》工作了一年。他的第一本書《政治序言》是在他短暫擔任紐約州斯克內克塔迪市第一位社會主義市長雷夫·喬治·R·倫恩的秘書後寫成的。但沒有任何教條能長久束縛李普曼。他很快放棄了社會主義——但並非放棄其所有主張——並於 1914 年成為自由派《新共和》雜誌的創始人之一。

During the war years, Lippmann left journalism briefly to serve as a member of “the Inquiry,” a clandestine group of theorists charged by President Wilson with drawing up terms of an acceptable peace. The young adviser helped formulate Wilson’s Fourteen Points and prepared a commentary on the peace terms to clarify them for the Allies. But Lippmann was disillusioned by the Versailles Treaty, believing that the conditions it imposed would inexorably lead to another war. He returned briefly to the New Republic, and then in 1921 signed on as an editorial writer for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
在戰爭年代，李普曼短暫離開新聞界，成為「調查團」的一員，這是一個由威爾遜總統委託的秘密理論家團體，負責制定可接受的和平條款。這位年輕的顧問幫助制定了威爾遜的十四點原則，並準備了一份關於和平條款的評論，以向盟國澄清這些條款。但李普曼對凡爾賽條約感到失望，認為其強加的條件不可避免地會導致另一場戰爭。他短暫回到《新共和》，然後在 1921 年成為約瑟夫·普利策的《紐約世界報》的社論作家。

During the Republican ’20s, the World was the nation’s most articulate Democratic newspaper, and Lippmann’s stately leaders became required reading for policymakers of all persuasions. When Lippmann later took command of the World’s editorial page, he transformed it into an austere daily seminar. Novelist James M. Cain, then an editorial associate, warned Lippmann that not all World readers were up to the demands that he made on their intelligence. “You are always trying to dredge up basic principles,” Cain said. “Now if what you’ve got to blow is a bugle, there isn’t any sense in camping yourself down in front of piano music.” Lippmann replied:”You may be right, but God damn it, I’m not going to spend my life writing bugle calls.”
在共和黨統治的 1920 年代，《世界報》是全國最善於表達民主立場的報紙，而李普曼莊嚴的社論成為各派政策制定者的必讀文章。當李普曼後來接管《世界報》的社論版時，他將其轉變成一個嚴肅的每日研討會。當時任職於社論部的小说家詹姆斯·M·凱恩警告李普曼，並非所有《世界報》的讀者都能達到他對他們智力的要求。「你總是試圖挖掘基本原則，」凱恩說。「現在你需要吹的是號角，而不是坐在鋼琴樂譜前。」李普曼回答：「你可能說得對，但該死的，我不打算花費一生去寫號角聲。」

Throughout the ’20s, Lippmann denounced in measured terms the main thrusts of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He opposed the isolationism that kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations and the World Court. He consistently skewered the passive presidencies of Harding and Coolidge (his epitaph on the latter’s Administration: “Nothing ventured, nothing lost”). Neither Lippmann nor the World foresaw the Great Depression, but his verdicts on the ’20s —reached in the heat of daily events—have held up remarkably well.
在整個 20 年代，李普曼以克制的言辭抨擊美國外交和國內政策的主要方向。他反對使美國置身於國際聯盟和世界法庭之外的孤立主義。他持續抨擊哈定和柯立芝的消極總統任期（對後者政府的評語是：「不冒險，不失敗」）。李普曼和《世界報》都未預見大蕭條的到來，但他對 20 年代的評論——在每日事件的熱潮中得出——卻出奇地經得起時間考驗。

The World folded into a merger with the New York Telegram in 1931; on the afternoon of the announcement, Ogden Reid, owner of the nation’s most influential Republican paper, asked Lippmann to write two columns a week for the New York Herald Tribune. The switch startled many, and some of Lippmann’s liberal friends accused him of selling out to the conservative opposition. Their suspicions seemed to be confirmed later when Lippmann blasted the “collectivism” of the New Deal. In the 1936 election, Lippmann supported Alfred Landon.
《世界報》在 1931 年與《紐約電訊報》合併；在宣布合併的那天下午，全國最有影響力的共和黨報紙老闆奧格登·雷德請求李普曼為《紐約先驅論壇報》每週撰寫兩篇專欄。這次轉變震驚了許多人，一些李普曼的自由派朋友指責他向保守派對手投降。他們的懷疑在後來似乎得到了證實，當李普曼抨擊新政的「集體主義」時。在 1936 年的選舉中，李普曼支持艾爾弗雷德·蘭登。

But Lippmann had not gone over to the Republicans. He was simply displaying once again his distrust of any grand scheme whose success depended on measures he considered oppressive. “The Good Society has no architectural design,” he wrote in 1937. “There are no blueprints.” Lippmann’s refusal to interpret events according to doctrine struck some critics as vacillation. In fact, Lippmann shifted far less than did the political spectrum against which his positions were measured.
但李普曼並未轉向共和黨。他只是再次展現出對任何成功取決於他所認為壓迫性措施的大計劃的不信任。「理想社會沒有建築設計，」他在 1937 年寫道。「沒有藍圖。」李普曼拒絕根據教條解釋事件，這讓一些批評者認為他是搖擺不定。事實上，與衡量其立場的政治光譜相比，李普曼的轉變要小得多。

Inconvenient Army. Most columnists’ predictions are forgotten in a matter of days or weeks. Walter Lippmann’s were not, and even admirers cherished his occasional blunders, perhaps to reassure themselves that he was human. He undervalued F.D.R.’s abilities and failed to take Hitler very seriously until 1939. In September 1941, calling the U.S. Army a “definite inconvenience,” he urged a reduction in the armed forces and a step-up of economic aid to England and Russia. Harry Truman’s upset victory in 1948 forced Lippmann to begin his next column with the pained and decidedly un-Delphic admission: “As one who did not foresee the result of the election . . .”
不便的軍隊。大多數專欄作家的預測在數天或數週內就被遺忘。沃爾特·李普曼的預測則不然，甚至他的仰慕者們也珍惜他偶爾的失誤，或許是為了讓自己相信他也是凡人。他低估了 F.D.R.的能力，直到 1939 年才開始認真對待希特勒。1941 年 9 月，他稱美國軍隊為「明顯的不便」，敦促削減武裝部隊並增加對英國和俄羅斯的经济援助。哈里·杜魯門在 1948 年的意外勝利迫使李普曼在下一篇專欄中以痛苦且明顯不具神諭色彩的承認開頭：「作為一個未能預見選舉結果的人……」

A more serious weakness was Lippmann’s detachment from the mire of human affairs. Comfortable in the company of statesmen and scholars, he did not always comprehend popular emotions or their impact on public policy. Lippmann derided the cold war, arguing reasonably that the Soviet Union and China would inevitably dominate their “orbits” as the U.S. did its own. This view is now grudgingly echoed in U.S. foreign policy, but Lippmann’s refusal to give weight to the explosive emotions of the cold war drew much criticism when tensions were at their peak. His writing style was elegant and correct to the last comma, but his artful convolutions sometimes trapped readers between unresolved propositions. Press Critic A.J. Liebling once called Lippmann “perhaps the greatest on-the-one-hand-this writer in the world today.”
更嚴重的弱點是李普曼脫離於人類事務的泥沼。他在政治家和學者的陪伴下感到自在，但並不總是理解大眾情緒或其對公共政策的影响。李普曼嘲笑冷戰，合理地認為蘇聯和中國將不可避免地像美國一樣主導各自的「軌道」。這一觀點如今在美國外交政策中不情願地得到迴響，但李普曼拒絕重視冷戰的激烈情緒，在緊張局勢達到頂峰時引來了許多批評。他的寫作風格優雅且精確到最後一個逗號，但他巧妙的迂迴有時會使讀者陷入未解的命題之間。報刊評論家 A.J. 利伯林 once called Lippmann「或許是當今世界上最大的『一方面這樣』作家」。

Whatever Lippmann’s gaffes, they were but a small fraction of the 10 million words he committed to print. His column was ultimately syndicated in more than 200 papers; it brought him wealth, honors and worldwide fame. His lean, dignified presence was another of Washington’s monuments. An invitation to the home he and his vivacious wife Helen had on Woodley Road, near the National Cathedral, was a command performance (Mrs. Lippmann died in February). Lippmann—called “the autocrat of the dinner table” by awed guests—would lead evening companions through Socratic questions on an encyclopedic range of subjects.
無論李普曼的失言有多少，這些都只是他撰寫的千萬文字中的一小部分。他的專欄最終在超過 200 家報紙上聯合刊登；這為他帶來了財富、榮譽和全球聲望。他那瘦削、莊重的身影，成為華盛頓的另一座紀念碑。受邀前往他和他那充滿活力的妻子海倫在伍德利路的家——靠近國家大教堂——猶如一場必須出席的演出（李普曼夫人於二月去世）。李普曼——被敬畏的賓客稱為「晚宴上的獨裁者」——會帶領晚上的同伴們通過蘇格拉底式的提問，探討百科全書般廣泛的主題。

Presidents coveted Lippmann’s approval and usually felt obliged to respond to his criticism. Both F.D.R. and Truman lashed out bitterly when Lippmann opposed them. John F. Kennedy and his advisers invited Lippmann’s advice and political imprimatur. But when a Lippmann column scolded J.F.K.’s policies, the President fumed and asked intimates why he should bother reading press criticisms of his actions. “Well,” he answered himself, “it’s still Walter Lippmann.”
總統們渴望得到李普曼的認可，並且通常感到有必要回應他的批評。當李普曼反對他們時，F.D.R.和杜魯門都曾激烈抨擊。約翰·F·肯尼迪和他的顧問們邀請李普曼提供意見和政治背書。但是，當李普曼的一篇專欄斥責 J.F.K.的政策時，總統氣憤地問親信為什麼他還要費心閱讀媒體對他行動的批評。“嗯，”他自問自答，“畢竟這是沃爾特·李普曼。”

Never Again. Lippmann’s most famous public feud was with Lyndon Johnson. L.B. J. had courted Lippmann’s support on the Viet Nam War in the belief that Lippmann could swing the nation’s liberals and academics into line; the vilification heaped on Lippmann for his opposition prompted Washington Post Cartoonist Herblock to write of the Johnson Administration’s “War on Walter Lippmann.”
再也不會。李普曼最著名的公開爭吵是與林登·詹森。L.B. J. 曾經爭取李普曼對越南戰爭的支持，相信李普曼能夠使國家的自由派和學者們站到同一陣線；因為李普曼的反對而受到的譴責，促使《華盛頓郵報》漫畫家赫布洛克寫到詹森政府的「對李普曼的戰爭」。

At the height of public acrimony in 1967, Lippmann gave up his Washington home and moved back to New York. Journalist Marquis Childs recalls Lippmann’s dejection at the time: “He was saying ‘Never again, never again.’ ” But he continued to speak out as a contributor to Newsweek and in interviews.
在 1967 年公眾情緒達到高潮時，李普曼放棄了他在華盛頓的家，搬回紐約。記者馬奎斯·蔡爾茲回憶起當時李普曼的沮喪：「他一直在說『再也不會了，再也不會了。』」但他仍繼續以《新聞週刊》撰稿人和接受採訪的方式發聲。

Richard Nixon’s diplomatic moves toward China and the Soviet Union won Lippmann’s praise, but he lamented the Watergate morass as “the worst scandal in our history.”
尼克森對中國和蘇聯的外交行動贏得了李普曼的讚賞，但他對水門醜聞感到悲歎，稱之為「我們歷史上最嚴重的醜聞」。

Crises, however, did not panic him. In a speech 40 years ago he said: “The world will go on somehow, and more crises will follow. It will go on best, however, if among us there are men who have stood apart, who refused to be anxious or too much concerned, who were cool and inquiring, and had their eyes on a longer past and a longer future.” He was such a man to the end.
然而，危機並未使他恐慌。在 40 年前的演講中，他說：「世界總會以某種方式繼續前行，更多的危機將接踵而至。然而，如果我們中間有一些人能夠獨立於眾，拒絕焦慮或過分擔憂，保持冷靜和探究，並將目光投向更長遠的過去和未來，那麼世界將會更好地前行。」他終其一生都是這樣的人。