Some of the best history books naturally center on the lives of political leaders, military heroes or even business titans. It is unusual for a historical narrative to feature a journalist. Yet Duke economic historian Craufurd D. Goodwin employs the writings of the once-famous newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann to describe the fervid U.S. debates that began with the 1929 stock-market crash. The device works beautifully. Lippmann, who wrote from 1931 to 1967, was so prolific, and his correspondence with other thinkers and decision makers was so cogent and extensive, that his oeuvre provides excellent material for examining a crucial moment in American history and essential aspects of the American economy, as hotly debated today as in Lippmann’s time.
一些最出色的歷史書籍自然圍繞政治領袖、軍事英雄甚至商業巨頭的生活展開。歷史敘事以記者為主角的情況並不多見。然而，杜克大學經濟史學家克勞福德·D·古德溫利用曾經著名的報紙專欄作家沃爾特·李普曼的著作，描述了始於 1929 年股市崩盤的激烈美國辯論。這種手法效果極佳。李普曼從 1931 年寫作至 1967 年，作品豐富，且他與其他思想家和決策者的通信既清晰又廣泛，因此他的作品為探討美國歷史上的關鍵時刻以及美國經濟的基礎方面提供了優質素材，這些議題在當今與李普曼時代同樣引起熱烈辯論。

The 1930s, as Mr. Goodwin writes, was a decade in which “public intellectuals” were coming into their own, bringing their influence to bear on the sometimes seamy business of law making—for better and often for worse. Franklin D. Roosevelt, after winning the presidency in 1932, famously assembled a “Brain Trust” of academics and theoreticians, who were supposed to do the heavy thinking for the New Deal revolution he was about to undertake. They were tasked to figure out why the American economy was in a funk and how to get things going again. They spent a lot of time quarreling among themselves, Mr. Goodwin observes. The result, he says, “was a cacophony.” He quotes Lippmann complaining of the “improvisation and haste” of these advisers and their “patchwork of different theories.”
1930 年代，正如古德溫先生所寫，是「公共知識分子」逐漸崛起的十年，他們對有時骯髒的法律制定過程施加影響——有好有壞。富蘭克林·D·羅斯福在 1932 年贏得總統大選後，著名地召集了一個由學者和理論家組成的「智囊團」，他們應該為他即將進行的新政革命進行深入的思考。他們的任務是找出美國經濟陷入困境的原因，以及如何讓經濟重新起步。古德溫先生觀察到，他們花了大量時間彼此爭吵。他說，結果「是一片嘈雜」。他引用李普曼抱怨這些顧問的「即興和倉促」以及他們「不同理論的拼湊」。

Lippmann was something of an umpire of the public debate, partly because he was experienced enough to keep his feet on the ground. He had not only a remarkably analytical mind but also the biggest megaphone. His column appeared in over 200 newspapers in the U.S. and abroad and reached eight million readers. Lawmakers, including FDR, consulted him for his wisdom.
李普曼在某種程度上是公眾辯論的裁判，部分原因是他經驗豐富，能夠腳踏實地。他不僅擁有非凡的分析頭腦，還擁有最大的傳聲筒。他的專欄出現在美國及海外超過 200 家報紙上，並擁有 800 萬讀者。包括羅斯福在內的立法者都會向他請教智慧之言。

Lippmann had been born to German-Jewish parents in 1889. At Harvard, he identified himself as a socialist, yet thereafter he would embrace the advice of the economist Thorstein Veblen: “keep the habits of the mind flexible and adapted to the movement of real life.” He was “by nature a loner,” Mr. Goodwin writes, “and he preferred not to be associated very closely with any discipline, institution or dominant mentor.”
李普曼於 1889 年出生於德裔猶太父母。在哈佛大學時，他自認為是社會主義者，但之後他採納了經濟學家索斯坦·凡勃倫的建議：「保持心靈的習慣靈活，並適應真實生活的變動。」古德溫先生寫道，他「天生是一個獨行俠」，「並不喜歡與任何學科、機構或主要導師過於密切地聯繫。」

At age 29, as an Army captain, Lippmann was an aide to President Woodrow Wilson at the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference. There he met John Maynard Keynes, another prodigy, and shared the Englishman’s view that the crushing reparations demanded of Germany were a huge mistake—as they indeed proved to be. Lippmann established his intellectual credentials in the 1920s, writing several well-received books. They included “Public Opinion,” which excoriated the press for sloppy coverage of government policies and actions. The book is often seen as a call for top-down rule by experts, but Mr. Goodwin argues that Lippmann had something else in mind—that he was eager for expert opinion and “reasoned study” to be widely disseminated so that self-government would be more fully informed and the citizenry less easily manipulated.
29 歲時，作為陸軍上尉的李普曼是伍德羅·威爾遜總統在第一次世界大戰後巴黎和平會議的助手。在那裡，他遇到了另一位傑出人物約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯，並與這位英國人持有相同觀點，認為對德國提出的沉重賠款要求是一個巨大的錯誤——事實證明確實如此。李普曼在 1920 年代確立了他的知識分子資歷，寫了幾本廣受好評的書籍。其中包括《公共輿論》，該書抨擊了媒體對政府政策和行動的草率報道。這本書常被視為呼籲由專家進行自上而下的統治，但古德溫先生認為李普曼有其他的想法——他渴望專家意見和「理性的研究」能夠廣泛傳播，以便自治更加充分知情，公民不易被操縱。

It was Lippmann’s syndicated column and its thoughtful critiques that made him famous. He correctly criticized President Herbert Hoover for piling new import tariffs (the Smoot-Hawley Act) onto an already flagging economy in the early 1930s. Although he was favorably disposed toward social legislation, at the end of his career he scored Lyndon B. Johnson for trying to finance both a war in Vietnam and a War on Poverty. The later collapse of the gold- and dollar-based international monetary system, not to mention an outbreak of inflation, confirmed his wisdom.
正是李普曼的聯合報專欄及其深思熟慮的評論使他聲名鵲起。他正確地批評了赫伯特·胡佛總統在 1930 年代初期對已經衰落的經濟加征新進口關稅（斯穆特-霍利法案）。雖然他傾向於支持社會立法，但在職業生涯末期，他抨擊了林登·B·詹森試圖同時資助越南戰爭和對貧困的戰爭。後來金本位和美元為基礎的國際貨幣體系崩潰，更不用說通脹的爆發，都證明了他的智慧。

Lippmann remained a close friend and sometime admirer of Keynes. But he was also a friend of a leading anti-Keynesian of the 1930s, Arizona Rep. Lewis Douglas. Lippmann was a defender of capitalism and admired the amazing feat that American corporations performed when they converted from peacetime to wartime production in a matter of months after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.
李普曼一直是凱恩斯的密友和有時的仰慕者。但他也是 1930 年代一位領導性反凱恩斯主義者、亞利桑那州代表劉易斯·道格拉斯的朋友。李普曼是資本主義的捍衛者，並對美國公司在 1941 年 12 月珍珠港襲擊後數月內從和平時期轉向戰時生產的驚人成就表示欽佩。

Certain in the 1930s that prosperity could only be restored through a return of investment confidence, Lippmann lamented the tendency to blame the country’s malaise on Wall Street. The need to seek out “malignant powers,” he said, was akin to our ancestors believing that “their troubles were caused by the evil eye.” He initially supported the 1933 FDR decision to dump the gold standard as a necessary expedient but in 1935 favored its return.
在 1930 年代，李普曼確信只有通過恢復投資信心才能重振繁榮，他對於將國家的困境歸咎於華爾街的傾向感到悲歎。他說，尋找「邪惡力量」的需要，就像我們的祖先認為「他們的麻煩是由邪眼造成的」一脈相承。他最初支持 1933 年羅斯福決定放棄金本位制作為必要的權宜之計，但在 1935 年贊成恢復金本位制。

At first, Lippmann embraced the Keynesian argument that government could ameliorate downswings in business cycles through deficit spending, but he later had second thoughts about economic engineering and became more attuned to the free-market ideas of Friedrich Hayek, whom he knew and consulted. When he once praised a Keynes article on monetary policy, he received a rebuke from the prominent University of Chicago monetary specialist Henry Simons, who called Keynes and his followers “a menace, politically and intellectually.” Lippmann attacked as ill-conceived the most ambitious New Deal brainstorm, the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, which attempted to organize all business and industry into cartels to boost prices. The Supreme Court killed this goofy and dangerous program in 1935. Mr. Goodwin ends his insightful chronicle by noting Lippmann’s disapproval of “the rudeness and ill-temper of modern politicians” and his call for “civilized discourse.” One more piece of wisdom we would do well to heed. It would be nice if he were still around to continue sorting things out.
一開始，李普曼接受了凱恩斯主義的觀點，認為政府能夠通過赤字支出來改善商業周期的衰退，但後來他對經濟工程學產生了疑慮，並逐漸傾向於他所認識並諮詢過的弗里德里希·海耶克的自由市場理念。當他 once 表揚一篇關於貨幣政策的凱恩斯文章時，他遭到了芝加哥大學著名的貨幣專家亨利·西蒙斯的斥責，西蒙斯稱凱恩斯及其追隨者是「政治和知識上的威脅」。李普曼抨擊了新政中最雄心勃勃的構思——1933 年的國家工業復興法案，該法案試圖將所有商業和工業組織成卡特爾以提高價格。最高法院在 1935 年終結了這個荒唐且危險的計劃。古德溫先生在他的洞察力十足的編年史結尾處指出，李普曼不滿「現代政治家們的粗魯和壞脾氣」，並呼籲「文明對話」。這是我們應該好好記取的又一智慧。如果他仍在世，繼續梳理這些事情，那該多好。