Charles Peters, founding editor of The Washington Monthly, a small political magazine that challenged liberal and conservative orthodoxy and was read avidly for decades in the White House, Congress and city newsrooms, died Thursday at his home in Washington. has expired. He was 96 years old.
His death was confirmed by The Washington Monthly, which reported that Mr. Peters “had been in declining physical health for several years, principally due to heart failure.”
Often called the “Godfather of neoliberalism”, the core policy principles of the magazine, Mr. Peters was editor of The Monthly from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. He also wrote five books on politics, government and history and a column, “Tilting”. At the Windmills,” offering pithy views on politics and current events from 1977 to 2014.
His work was not widely read, let alone understood by the general public. However, for the Washington cognoscenti, his voice was important in the din of the capital. His neoliberalism has given liberals and conservatives reason to step back and, if not to compromise, at least reevaluate their central beliefs.
In “A Neoliberal Manifesto”, which first appeared in The Washington Post in 1982, Mr. Peters laid out the comprehensive philosophy of the neoliberal movement. He wrote, “We still believe in liberty and justice and fair opportunity for all, in compassion for the suffering and in help to the poor.” “But we no longer automatically support unions and big government, or oppose the military and big business. In fact, in our search for solutions that work, we have come to distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.
Mr. Peters amplified his message in an interview with The New York Times in 1984, saying that his movement would support a strong national defense with a military draft, the firing of public-school teachers deemed incompetent, aid for job-creating entrepreneurs. Supports. An end to Social Security and patriotism for the rich, as long as it’s not “false flag waving.”
Andrew Hurst wrote in The Columbia Journalism Review in 1999, “Peters and his magazine began to help redefine liberalism by advocating a number of positions that at the time were more associated with right-wing Republicanism—enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. support and a tough attitude towards criminals.”
Peters’ neoliberalism, he added, “helped effect a shift toward the center of the Democratic Party.”
A West Virginia Democrat who grew up in the Great Depression and World War II and an admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Mr. Peters, a lawyer and state legislator, won the John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign honored his ideals as a local official. and later as an executive in the Peace Corps, responsible for evaluating its global performance.
When he founded The Washington Monthly, Mr. Peters envisioned a magazine that would focus on the flaws and weaknesses of politics and government while also evaluating Washington’s performance, a task that many critics found bizarre. . He had a picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the wall of his office.
With no experience in journalism, he began on the premise that Washington did a poor job, and said his magazine would examine its culture “in the way an anthropologist looks at a South Sea island.” He promised to help readers “understand our system of politics and government, where it breaks, why it breaks, and what can be done about it.”
Nothing was off limits. They targeted presidents, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, Democrats as well as Republicans, lobbyists, the press; Everyone was ready to meet. The Monthly found a self-asserting Washington where responsibilities were assigned to bureaucrats, journalists got news from press releases, military leaders supported wars to further their careers, courts employed lawyers rather than law. And no one was really accountable.
Mr. Peters wrote in his 1980 book, “How Washington Really Works,” “In government, like in humans, the fat is concentrated at the middle levels, where planning analysts and deputy assistant administrators spend their days writing memos and attending meetings. ” ,
Operating on a very low budget, lacking advertising and rarely exceeding 30,000 subscribers, the magazine achieved remarkable success. A 1977 article, “The Other Washington”, documented the growing power of lobbyists, and in 1980 a featured article warned of dangers in NASA’s space shuttle program, six years before Challenger broke up over the Atlantic Ocean. In which seven people died.
Mr. Peters, a tough mentor, launched the careers of dozens of young reporters and editors who took low wages to learn serious advocacy journalism. Many people became famous writers and journalists. Some took prominent positions at The Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, national magazines and broadcasters, and online journalism columns such as Politico and Slate.
Alumni included James Fallows, correspondent for The Atlantic; Nicholas Lemon, former dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Jonathan Alter, an author and former Newsweek editor; Suzannah Lessard, writer for The New Yorker; Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian; David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist; James Bennett, former editorial page editor of The Times and now senior editor of The Economist; and Katherine Boo, a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist.
Charles Given Peters Jr. was born on December 22, 1926 in Charleston, W.Va. He was the only child of Charles Sr. and Esther Teague Peters. His father was a prominent trial lawyer and Democrat in state politics. Young Charles had a rebellious nature and at the age of 13 he was sent to the Kentucky Military Institute near Louisville. Being harassed, he left the job after a year and went home.
At Charleston High School, he graduated with straight A’s and participated in student council and dramatic activities. After graduating in 1944, he joined the Army, but a serious training injury left him hospitalized until World War II ended.
He graduated from Columbia College with a humanities degree in 1949 and received a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1951. He considered a theatrical career but decided on politics and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1957.
That same year he married Elizabeth Hubbell. They had a son, Christian Avery. He is survived by her as well as two grandchildren.
Mr. Peters won a seat in West Virginia’s House of Delegates in 1960 and managed John Kennedy’s campaign in Kanawha, the state’s largest county, whose seat was Charleston.
He joined the Kennedy administration in 1961 as an evaluator for the Peace Corps, and reported to its director R. Reported to Sergeant Shriver. He became head of Peace Corps Research in 1966, he said, but left the post a year later, disillusioned with America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Despite all his liberal leanings, Mr. Peters wrote in his autobiography, “Tilting at Windmills” (1988), his decision to publish The Washington Monthly was influenced by the conservative publisher Henry R. Luce, who founded the Time magazine empire and transformed American. Journalism by offering a point of view in the coverage of news.
“The conclusion seemed obvious,” Mr. Peters wrote. “I should also start a magazine and change the way journalism covers the government.”
Paul Glastris, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, succeeded Mr. Peters as editor of the magazine in 2001, which began bimonthly publication in 2008, citing costs. In 1998, Mr. Peters, who lives in Washington, founded Understanding Government, a nonprofit that evaluates federal agencies. It closed in 2014.
His last book, “We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America” (2017) urged Americans to abandon a culture of “self-absorption, self-promotion, and money-making” and instead embrace values. The Roosevelt era, when, he said, “the spirit of generosity was accompanied by the spirit of neighborliness,” and “those who helped less helped those who had even less.”
Eduardo Medina Contributed to the reporting.
