Cogitating Peter (CP) is an academic that writes a regular column of political opinion. His major problems as a writer and thinker are two;  his belief, his faith in his own expertise and a palpable contempt for his readers. This is surely a combination that might doom his random jottings to become the object of scorn, by the readers that are the subject of his scorn, even contempt. One cannot even imagine the good grey Mr. Lippmann ever addressing his readers as anything but as fellow inquirers into the nature and goods of politics, as practiced in a definable historical moment. Although Mr. Lippmann was a singular thinker in the world of newspapermen, his only intellectual equal being Raymond Aron, he was a gentleman of stoic intellect not given to affronting his readers with unmerited intellectual abuse.