Walter Lippmann would have been well positioned to come to self-serving opinions himself, having served with Edward Bernays, subsequent author of 'Propaganda', on the Creel Commission and on the Committee on Public Information during WW I. The primary problem they faced was the opposition of so many German Americans to the US entering WW I on the side of the Allies.

Bernays showed how with techniques later described in his seminal Propaganda, while Lippmann provided the justification for using said techniques in Public Opinion. They, (the government), have been doing it ever since

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."