We Do Our Part

The legendary editor who founded the Washington Monthly explores “the resentful, unequal, uncaring parts of today’s American culture that Trump has inflamed and that have made Trump possible—and how to cope with them” (The Atlantic).
 
Foreword by Jon Meacham
 
With clarity and wit, the legendary editor Charles Peters explains the chasm that defines us today: the split between the educated elite and the working-class, rural, and religious voters who live in what's condescendingly—but tellingly—known as flyover country.
 
The beginning of the end of Trumpism will come when blue-state sophisticates confront their role in creating the political, economic, and cultural resentments that propelled the forty-fifth president into office. Too many Democrats lost touch with the average American, Peters argues, when the liberal elite became more concerned with being smarter, having better taste, and making more money than with understanding why workers were earning less and hated being regarded with contempt. It was this hatred of being looked down on as bigoted boobs in polyester that united working-class, rural, and evangelical voters, and helped set the stage for the culturally populist backlash of 2016 and beyond.
 
In We Do Our Part, Peters shows us where we have been and where we are going, drawing on his invaluable perspective as a man who has seen America's better days and still believes in the promise that lies ahead.

Praise for We Do Our Part

“[Peters] weaves a synthesis of mainstream and progressive, centrist and popular thought that would re-anchor the Democratic Party, both in its own traditions and in outreach to the restless, angry swath of the country that elected President Trump. . . . Peters is an American original.”—The Washington Post

“A great book about modern American history.”—Chris Matthews, Hardball

Charles Peters was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and educated in local public schools. He earned a BA and an MA at Columbia University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Peters served in the U.S. Army and the West Virginia legislature, practiced law, and managed John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in Kanawha County. Peters also helped found the Peace Corps and served as its director of evaluation. The founder and longtime editor of The Washington Monthly, Peters is the author of several books, including an examination of the political system, How Washington Really Works; a history, Five Days in Philadelphia; and a biography, Lyndon B. Johnson, for the American Presidents series.