Mark Shields quotes:

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  • John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

  • If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

  • The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.

  • The lobbying over China most favored nation trading status was disgusting. There's no way in hell that MFN would have passed in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000 if all these companies hadn't come in flooding and making campaign contributions and ask for people's support. That drove the debate. Every year was the allure of corporate dollars flooding into members' bank accounts.

  • In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

  • Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command, save one, has stood with him.

  • John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

  • The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.

  • There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.

  • Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

  • The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work; you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.

  • I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.

  • Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

  • Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.

  • From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it.

  • This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.

  • When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.

  • George W. Bush in 2000 went to private financing for the nomination, but he accepted public funding in the general. And, quite frankly, so did - it was broken in 2008, when Barack Obama decided he wasn't going to do that.

  • I have my disagreements with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.

  • There is always strength in numbers

  • What you have is two men seeking the White House; they're both products of prominent New England families. They both went to private boarding schools. They both went to a prestigious university.

  • At a time when the public is sour on politicians, have no use for them, Bill Clinton has risen to a different level. Bill Clinton is endlessly interesting.

  • Big money buys access in Washington, and access purchases influence. It is as simple as that. And they have basically given a green light, a further green light, after Citizens United, to the biggest money to have the bigger voice in our politics, and to sound out and drown out the voice of just ordinary citizens.

  • The way to solve all the money in politics is not to pretend we can get money out of politics. That will never happen. We have to channel it in ways where we can see it and hold it accountable. And I think the parties are the best vehicle for that.

  • The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame, and it should be a national embarrassment.

  • He who speaks the truth must keep one foot in the stirrup.

  • If an abduction is reported, it is dealt with in the same way as a kidnap.

  • Health care, it's going to be political. It's going to be, let's say, the confluence of the politics and the messy implementation.

  • Politics is a contact sport - a question of accepting an elbow or two.

  • You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

  • You've got people who didn't serve with John Kerry saying they did serve with John Kerry in the boat. With George Bush, we can't find anybody who did serve with him.

  • John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

  • There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.

  • As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

  • [Hillary Clinton] showed, while in the Senate, that ability to connect and reach across and to forge alliances. I think she will be better [than Barack Obama]. But I think the problem with connecting emotionally with the people remains at large is - in a wholesale way.

  • [In politics] when A goes after B and there's a C, and D and a Q all lined up there, you have no idea who's going to be the beneficiary.

  • 90 percent of American schoolchildren are in public schools. And the emphasis on private schools and charter schools and parochial schools is not unimportant.

  • All about midterm elections is turnouts. And turnout is measured by enthusiasm, intensity, how interested are people. And President Obama - candidate Obama had it on his side in 2008. The Democrats had it on their side in 2006. The enthusiasm, the intensity, the passion was all on their side.

  • All politics is personal with President Trump. And that carries with it great, great problems.

  • America is Republican until 5:00 or 6:00 at night.

  • American education will be determined by the quality of American public education, and that's public schools that are available.

  • Americans don't like powerful figures who punch down, that is, who pick on someone less powerful and less able to speak for themselves than they are.

  • Americans don't like the way Washington operates. They don't like Washington. They don't like the way things are going.

  • As long as Republicans won't - won't raise taxes and as long as Democrats won't in any way make entitlements based on need, rather than just across the board, I really think that we're doomed to this deadlock.

  • Barack Obama did get a higher percentage of the vote than anybody has in this country in 20 years. I mean, it was a resounding victory. I mean, whether his core constituency was 20 percent or what, his electoral constituency, which is how we measure elections, was 53 percent, which was, you know, historically high, the highest of any Democrat, other than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

  • Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.

  • But take the Russia issue. You open up the convention, and you have got a report that the Democratic Party has been hacked by the Russians, e-mails, the e-mails of the Democratic Party, which is a headline and words that you don't want, if you're Hillary Clinton's campaign.And Donald Trump immediately takes the story and basically steps on the advantage he has and say, well, the Russians, who am I to tell [Vladimir] Putin? You know, the Russians ought to come in and continue to hack our - and find out where the e-mails are.

  • By a 2-1 margin, voters believe that Donald Trump would change business as usual in Washington, but by almost as large a margin, they believe that Hillary Clinton would be better in a crisis and less of a decisive margin she cares about people like them.

  • Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

  • Clinton's major problem, and the two aren't separable really because there is hope in the country, the hope - - optimism has slipped dramatically, make no mistake about every measurement shows that. But the hope is still there. Hope is with him. People want change. They see him as the best chance for change.

  • Critics of Donald Trump take him literally, but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

  • Dan Coats, retiring senator from Indiana, a mild-mannered man, a former United States ambassador to Germany, former congressman, said of Ted Cruz he's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen.And he said, you can quote me on that.

  • Democrats, if they're smart and they're not brain-dead, are doing two things right now.They're having self-deprecating humor written for them. There was no humor in Cleveland. And they are not making this a Donald Trump.

  • Donadld Trump loves loyalty.

  • Donald Trump has taken over the Republican Party. He's transformed the Republican Party.

  • Donald Trump is an independent presidential candidate who ran on the Republican label. He really did. He took it over. He transformed it into his image, in his likeness.

  • Donald Trump is appealing to the basest, the most selfish and the most literally un-American of instincts.

  • Donald Trump is not an unintelligent man.

  • Donald Trump is to traditional values what I am to marathon running.

  • Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.

  • Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

  • Drones are sort of the perfect weapon for a country that doesn't want to go to war. It only - there's no fingerprint. There's no direct involvement. There's human beings killed on the other end. You never see them. You don't have to worry about them. You don't have to meet their widows. It's sort of an antiseptic warfare.

  • Every measurement of where you have more public confidence in creating jobs, American prosperity, controlling crime, health care, providing education, all of these standards, Bill Clinton has considerably high marks. The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack.

  • Everyone has to take Donald Trump seriously, and I think that's what we're seeing.

  • For many years, we have had these campaign finance reforms, and they have been failures. Money is more coursing through our system than ever before. Incumbents have used the laws to advantage themselves. And one of the reasons I think they have been failures is we have tried to crush down the money in places like the political parties, and it has squished out into opaque super PACs and sort of hidden channels.

  • George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

  • Hillary Clinton has emphasized that she is afflicted with or possessed of the responsibility gene.

  • Hillary Clinton should get a bounce out of her convention, I mean a bounce in the polls. I think it's probably conceded that Donald Trump got about a three-point bounce out of his conventions. He's closed the gap that much.

  • Human trafficking is a human tragedy. It's an outrage against any decent people.

  • I am struck the whole litany of people, especially of that era, who were involved in some scandal or another. Some of it was sexual. Some of it was more financial. And it was just all concentrated in a lot of people all at once.

  • I believe devoutly that the national election is the closest thing we have to a civic sacrament of democracy. And I really do think that heed must be paid, and when people make a decision, those who are on the other side, including me, accept it, for that reason.

  • I do look upon the secretary of education's primary responsibility as the quality of education that - and improving the education that every child in American public schools receives.

  • I don't think he should make foreign policy on the basis of peak,but I don't think it can be overstated that Israel has been an embattled democracy that has enjoyed the bipartisan and overwhelming support of Americans. It has been a moral force.

  • I personally believe that [Donald Trump] is wrong on the condition of America.

  • I saw money change votes.I mean, they just seem unaware of this, that money is something - if they want to see the appearance of corruption, all they had to do was look in Las Vegas last weekend.

  • I think an increasing number of Republicans are perplexed and actually nervous about Donald Trump and Russia, nervous in the sense that he is gratuitously giving Democrats the national security advantage, that they're standing up for the country.

  • I think Democrats ought to be concerned, that the party has become almost prideful about the college-educated vote that it's getting, the support that Hillary Clinton is getting against Donald Trump.

  • I think Donald Trump is obviously the more colorful, the more flamboyant, the more dominant personality.

  • I think Guantanamo, has been synonymous with the staining of American values and American legal tradition.

  • I think part of Donald Trump's appeal is that he's a guy that does cut corners, that he's the guy that does get deals and maybe does break a speed limit. I think there was sort of a roguish, rascally, but I get things done even if I break the rules.

  • I think she [Hillary Clinton] would be far superior to President [Barack] Obama, who is basically remote, aloof and not involved with - he doesn't deal with members of Congress.

  • I think that "Arabs coming out in droves" is so violative Jewish values that non-Jews admire so much about Jewish people throughout history, of welcoming the stranger, of standing up for the outsider, of defending the marginalized. This was classic us against them. This was the narrowest and meanest of politics, to which Jews, sadly and tragically, around the world have been subjected to.

  • I think that the people that are publicly on Hillary Clinton's short list all are very congenial people. They're not people with personality or Captain Queeg problems.

  • I think the Republican Party is cursed. And it's cursed itself.

  • I think this was as good a Democratic Convention [ this was my 24th convention] as I have seen since the 1976 convention, which nominated Jimmy Carter.I just thought it was a spectacularly successful convention. I don't think Hillary Clinton's speech was spectacular, but I don't think she's a spectacular speaker.

  • If Donald Trump does lose, being revealed as this bizarre personality, Ted Cruz is not going to be what Republicans are looking for in 2020.

  • If Mitt Romney had got the percentage Ronald Reagan did of Hispanics, he would have defeated Barack Obama.

  • If you're on the other side from me, you're not simply wrong or ill-informed or mistaken. We don't share the same country, the same values. You may not be the same kind of an American I am.

  • I'm a little nervous about public funding. It's better than what we got now.

  • I'm not sure Betsy DeVos has ever spent a day in a public school. And I don't - I'm pretty sure Donald Trump hasn't.

  • Immigrants have been the sustenance and the survival and the treasure of America.

  • In a strange way, Hillary Clinton was helped and victimized by Barack and Michelle Obama.Michelle Obama was probably better than Barack Obama, if you think about it.Her speech is a masterful, masterful speech. And she delivered it in a persuasively conversational tone.

  • In the past, in order to continue as a candidate, a serious candidate, you had to be in the top three finishes in Iowa. You had to be in the top two out of New Hampshire. All our presidents elected in the past half-century finished either first or second in New Hampshire and in the top three in Iowa. That changed with the Citizens United, when we gave unlimited amounts of money.

  • It's not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives in the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of the parents every single day.

  • Let's give the president some due.

  • Mitt Romney looks like a president. I mean, he really does.

  • Mitt Romney looks like a secretary of state. He looks like the chancellor of the exchequer.

  • Mitt Romney was the man who stood up to Donald Trump early, hard, never wavered.

  • My church [Catholisism] is hurting from arrogance and from its indifference to the suffering of children that were abused and the inclination of the leadership to protect the institution, rather than the children.

  • Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.

  • Now the Republicans have a very low-scale, by economic standards, base. Donald Trump has.

  • Once I accuse you of racist, I have demonized you, and it means any future collaboration, cooperation between us is a sign of my moral deficiency, if I would deal with someone like that. It's a terrible thing to do.

  • One of the first things every press secretary assures you is, the boss has a wonderful sense of humor, because not to have a sense of humor is considered flagrantly un-American.

  • Peter Hart, the pollster, has a question when he asks about presidential or vice presidential candidates, what kind of a neighbor would they be? And several Democrats - George W. Bush was always seen to be a good friendly neighbor who would pick up the newspapers if you were out of town or check your mail.

  • Politics, they all - talked to the insiders.

  • Presidential trust is something, that's perishable and it's precious. And once a president loses it, it's not a question of whether it's conflict of interests laws or there aren't conflict of interests laws.

  • Ronald Reagan four times accepted the limits in contributions of what he could take, what he could spend, and the public funding for the general elections. So I just think the idea that it didn't work, and didn't work - it did work. It worked brilliantly.

  • Russia today is nothing but a propaganda arm.

  • Sometimes, you just let the country have its way, and you don't try to determine the shape of the country. You sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes.

  • Stronger together is, I think, a preposition and a comparative adjective, but it's not really an action verb or what it is.

  • The charter school is a possibility, an alternative in certain circumstances, but not in most, and not in most places, and not - most parents don't have either the time, the inclination or the aptitude to sit and go through sifting what school and what is available and what the options are.

  • The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect.

  • The Democrats are now an upscale party.

  • The Democrats are standing on one side, and the Republicans are playing games on the other. Both sides are playing games.

  • The Democrats have an economic message that is directed at people at the lower end. That has been their cornerstone. The Republicans has been more upscale.

  • The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.

  • The Democrats have tried the war against women in the past. It didn't really have that much traction.

  • The fact is that it's the most dangerous place to be on the political scale is to brand those on the other side as racist. That's the atomic bomb. That's the nuclear weapon of an American.

  • The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

  • The pattern of American presidential elections is that the more optimistic candidate, whether it's John Kennedy and let's get America moving again, Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America, or Barack Obama, yes, we can, always wins, or nearly always wins.

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