kes deals with other nations there has been lack of complete documentation of the details of those deals. This is because they are agreements between one man and another. Yet it is the whole country which must live up to the obligations of the agreements. Lippmann makes the point on page 182 “There is no systematically and authorized way for Congress to know what is going on in the world.” Despite having all of these opinions on the matter at hand, Lippmann does say on page 145, “Whatever their limitations the chiefs are in actual contact with some crucial part of the larger environment. They decide, they give orders, they bargain….”, and on page 144, “The people on whom we depend for contact with the outside world are the ones running it.” In essence what he is saying is that besides all of the shortcomings in the current system of foreign policy, there is little that can be done. He says “We find ourselves trusting certain people who constitute our means of junction with pretty nearly the whole realm of unknowable things. Complete independence in the universe is completely unthinkable.” The main idea of the book was the basis of public opinion and foreign policy will only be better formed when the basis of public opinion is overhauled. This is best summarized when Walter Lippmann said, “It is because they are compelled to act without a reliable picture of the world, that governments, schools, newspapers, and churches make small headway against the more obvious failings of democracy, against violent prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and the three legged calves”...
