Charlie Peters, the man who tried to save Washington
For those who thrive in Washington, DC, the city is so pleasant they often lose sight of how smug and insular it can be—how abstracted from the country it is meant to serve. They arrive with dreams of changing the world, and some even do so, a bit. But the city changes them, too. Over the years their innate proportions of idealism and careerism, though both to some degree ever-present, tend to migrate towards the latter.
It comes to seem only natural that a city created to benefit all Americans sucks in enough wealth to make it among the richest places in the country; that one of its key industries, lobbying, manufactures influence over lawmakers (with record sales of $4bn in 2022); that book parties, embassy receptions and television green rooms, along with the touchlines of soccer pitches at private schools where tuition exceeds Americans’ median personal income, are venues for journalists and public officials to chew over the latest occupant of the White House. Presidents come and go; the Washington establishment abides, and prospers.
Charles Peters, a magazine editor who died on Thanksgiving Day at the age of 96, was a fixture of Washington who nevertheless stood apart from it. Mr Peters—Charlie, as he was invariably called by those who knew federal Washington—arrived during what now seems a romantic and even innocent time, the presidency of John F. Kennedy. An Army veteran and lawyer, Charlie won a seat in the West Virginia house of delegates in 1960 while in the primary helping deliver a crucial county to Kennedy. His reward was a role in a signature Kennedy initiative, the Peace Corps.
2023-12-02 13:32:43
Original from www.economist.com