Comment by staticautomatic

Yes. However, I don't think it's accurate to characterize Lippmann's assessment of the public as "meddlesome". It's true that he was an elitist, but Lippmann's brand of elitism stemmed from the empirical observation that governing a large population is clearly too complex for even a representative democracy to do well (and is certainly more difficult than proponents of democracy are willing to admit, if not impossible). Unlike most forms of elitism, his view of the public as incapable of governing itself was not rooted in ideas about their moral inferiority but in the acknowledgement that it just isn't functionally possible for them to run the show. This observation led to three conclusions (which IMO are correct): 1) That democracy at scale always regresses to partisanship, 2) The idea that "the people" actually govern themselves in any real democracy is largely a farce, and 3) That a system of "representatives" and bureaucrats running the show is itself elitist.