Why did I name a Substack after Walter Lippmann?

Sixteen months ago, on a mountain outside Red Lodge, Montana, I decided I wanted to be like Walter Lippmann.

That day, as I trudged along a path and admired the sheer number of signs saying my life was at risk for not carrying bear spray, I listened to the audiobook of historian Tim Shenk’s “Realigners.” The book had a chapter all about Lippmann — the defining political columnist of his time.

I was enthralled, not by Lippmann’s long career or ideas, but by his very first job: working as an assistant to George Lunn, the Socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York. At the time, I was convinced that I’d spend my life as Lippmann started his, as a cog in the broader machine of left-wing politics. If that meant working for a real progressive, great. But if it meant doing what I had done that summer — working on the re-election campaign of a very moderate Democrat in the form of Jon Tester — that would also be great.

But now, I’ve become disillusioned with that world. As I wrote in The Nation this morning, while working for Tester I lost faith in the present Democratic campaign mindset. The party has become obsessed with long outdated strategies and stories that are doomed to fail. I don’t believe the narrative we see in the campaign world reflects what 2025 looks like in the real world.

Admittedly, six months on a campaign was a pretty rapid disillusionment. But more rapid was Lippmann’s disillusionment with Lunn’s administration a hundred years ago, where he quit his political audition after just four months because, well, he thought there was a mismatch between the administration and the world he saw.

Lippmann’s next gig? Writing about politics he believed in, rather than practicing politics he didn’t. He put out his first book, A Preface to Politics, just about a year after leaving Schenectady.

So what else would I do than follow Lippmann’s path from disillusioned political cog to amateur political writer with this weekly Substack? Hopefully, I can at least reach the status he bestowed to one political writer in 1915: “just a puzzled man taking notes” about the world.