Charles Peters, neoliberal founder of The Washington Monthly, dies at 96

Charles Peters, the founder and editor of The Washington Monthly, a small political magazine that challenged liberal and conservative orthodoxies and was avidly read for decades in the White House, Congress and city newsrooms, died Thursday at his home in Washington. He was 96.

His death was confirmed by The Washington Monthly reports this that Mr. Peters “had been in declining physical health for several years, primarily due to congestive heart failure.”

Mr. Peters, often called the “godfather of neoliberalism,” the magazine’s core policy doctrine, 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 Windmills’, with pithy thoughts on politics and current affairs, from 1977 to 2014.

His work was not widely read, let alone understood, by the general public. But for Washington experts, his voice was important in the cacophony of the capital. His neoliberalism gave liberals and conservatives reasons to take a step back and, if not to compromise, at least reassess their central beliefs.

In ‘A Neoliberal Manifesto’ which first appeared in The Washington Post in 1982, Mr. Peters laid out the broad philosophy of the neoliberalist movement: “We still believe in freedom and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for those who are struggling,” he wrote. “But we no longer automatically support unions and big government, or oppose the military and big business. 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 his movement favored a strong national defense with a military draft, the firing of public school teachers deemed incompetent, aid to entrepreneurs who creating jobs, an end to welfare for the wealthy, and patriotism, provided it was “not fake flag waving.”

“Peters and his magazine began to help redefine liberalism by advocating a number of positions more associated with right-wing Republicanism at the time — enthusiastic support for entrepreneurship and a tough stance on criminals,” wrote Andrew Hearst in the Columbia Journalism. Review from 1999. Peters’ neoliberalism, he said, “has helped influence the Democratic Party’s shift toward the center over the past twenty years.”

A West Virginia Democrat who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II and loved President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Mr. Peters, a lawyer and state legislator, refined his ideals as a local official during John’s presidential campaign F. Kennedy in 1960 and later as a Peace Corps executive responsible for evaluating its global performance.

When he founded The Washington Monthly, Mr. Peters envisioned a magazine that would also evaluate Washington’s performance, highlighting the shortcomings and weaknesses of politics and government, a task that struck many critics as quixotic . He hung a drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the wall in his office.

Lacking experience in journalism, he assumed Washington was dysfunctional, saying his magazine would examine its culture “as an anthropologist examines an island in the South Seas.” 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. He targeted presidents, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, both Democrats and Republicans, lobbyists, the press; they were all grist to the mill. The Monthly found a self-validating Washington where bureaucrats abdicated, reporters got their news from press releases, military leaders preferred wars to advance their careers, courts served lawyers instead of the law, and no one was truly accountable.

“In government, as in people, fat tends to concentrate at the middle levels, where planning analysts and deputy assistant administrators spend their days writing memoranda and attending meetings,” Mr. Peters said in his book from 1980, “How Washington Really Works. ”

Operating on a shoestring budget, with bloodless advertising and rarely exceeding 30,000 subscribers, the magazine scored remarkable beats. A 1977 piece, “The Other Washington,” documented the growing power of lobbyists, and an exclusive 1980 article warned of the dangers of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, six years before the Challenger broke up over the Atlantic Ocean and the seven-person crew died.

A tough mentor, Mr. Peters launched the careers of dozens of young reporters and editors who paid low wages to learn serious journalism. Many became famous authors and journalists, holding prominent positions at The Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, national magazines and broadcasters, and online journalism meccas like Politico and Slate.

Alumni included James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic; Nicholas Lemann, the former dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Jonathan Alter, an author and former Newsweek editor; Suzannah Lessard, a writer for The New Yorker; Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian; David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist; James Bennet, the former editor of The Times editorial page, and Katherine Boo, a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist.

Charles Given Peters Jr. was born on December 22, 1926 in Charleston, W.Va., the only child of Charles Sr. and Esther Teague Peters. His father was a prominent trial attorney and Democrat in state politics. Young Charles had a rebellious streak and was sent to the Kentucky Military Institute, near Louisville, at the age of 13. Bullied, he quit after a year and went home.

At Charleston High School he thrived with straight A’s and participated in student council and theatrical activities. After graduating in 1944, he joined the Army, but a serious training injury kept him hospitalized until after the end of World War II.

He graduated from Columbia College in 1949 with a degree in humanities, and received a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1951. He considered a career in theater but opted for politics, earning a law degree from the University of Virginia.

He married Elizabeth Hubbell that same year. They had a son, Christian Avery. They survive him, as do two grandchildren.

Mr. Peters won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1960 and led Kennedy’s campaign in the state’s largest county, Kanawha, whose seat is Charleston, the capital.

He joined the Kennedy administration in 1961 as an evaluator for the Peace Corps, reporting to R. Sargent Shriver, its director, on the progress of volunteers working at home and abroad. He became head of the Peace Corps investigation in 1966 but quit a year later, depressed, he said, about American involvement in the Vietnam War.

For all his liberal leanings, Mr. Peters said in his autobiography “Tilting at Windmills” (1988) that his decision to publish The Washington Monthly was inspired by Henry R. Luce, the conservative publisher who founded the Time magazine empire and turned the world changed. American journalism by introducing a point of view into reporting.

“The conclusion seemed obvious,” Mr. Peters wrote. “I too should start a magazine and change the way journalism reports on government.”

Paul Glastris, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, succeeded Mr. Peters in 2001 as editor of the magazine, which switched to bimonthly publication in 2008, citing costs. In 1998, Mr. Peters, who lived in Washington, founded Understanding Government, a nonprofit organization that evaluated federal agencies. It closed in 2014.

His latest 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 making a barrel of money’ and rather the values ​​of the Roosevelt era, when, he said, “the spirit of generosity was matched by a sense of neighborliness,” and “those who had little helped those who had even less.”

Eduardo Medina reporting contributed.