PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

3
Leaders often pretend that they have merely uncovered a program which
existed in the minds of their public. When they believe it, they are
usually deceiving themselves. Programs do not invent themselves
synchronously in a multitude of minds. That is not because a multitude
of minds is necessarily inferior to that of the leaders, but because
thought is the function of an organism, and a mass is not an organism.
This fact is obscured because the mass is constantly exposed to
suggestion. It reads not the news, but the news with an aura of
suggestion about it, indicating the line of action to be taken. It
hears reports, not objective as the facts are, but already stereotyped
to a certain pattern of behavior. Thus the ostensible leader often
finds that the real leader is a powerful newspaper proprietor. But if,
as in a laboratory, one could remove all suggestion and leading from
the experience of a multitude, one would, I think, find something like
this: A mass exposed to the same stimuli would develop responses that
could theoretically be charted in a polygon of error. There would be a
certain group that felt sufficiently alike to be classified together.
There would be variants of feeling at both ends. These classifications
would tend to harden as individuals in each of the classifications
made their reactions vocal. That is to say, when the vague feelings of
those who felt vaguely had been put into words, they would know more
definitely what they felt, and would then feel it more definitely.
Leaders in touch with popular feeling are quickly conscious of these
reactions. They know that high prices are pressing upon the mass, or
that certain classes of individuals are becoming unpopular, or that
feeling towards another nation is friendly or hostile. But, always
barring the effect of suggestion which is merely the assumption of
leadership by the reporter, there would be nothing in the feeling of
the mass that fatally determined the choice of any particular policy.
All that the feeling of the mass demands is that policy as it is
developed and exposed shall be, if not logically, then by analogy and
association, connected with the original feeling.
So when a new policy is to be launched, there is a preliminary bid for
community of feeling, as in Mark Antony's speech to the followers of
Brutus. [Footnote: Excellently analyzed in Martin, _The Behavior of
Crowds,_ pp. 130-132,] In the first phase, the leader vocalizes the
prevalent opinion of the mass. He identifies himself with the familiar
attitudes of his audience, sometimes by telling a good story,
sometimes by brandishing his patriotism, often by pinching a
grievance. Finding that he is trustworthy, the multitude milling
hither and thither may turn in towards him. He will then be expected
to set forth a plan of campaign. But he will not find that plan in the
slogans which convey the feelings of the mass. It will not even always