Mark Shields Quotations

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.

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.

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

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

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.

George Bush is trying to play it both ways.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

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

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!

Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

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

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

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

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

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.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

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.

There is definitely a certain proportion of this population for whom the only way to deal with humiliation - the only way to regain respect - is through violence. This is a place where many people don't look for ways to resolve a dispute. They take all matters to the very bitter end.

More and more young people are coming out because in the past 10 years especially we've seen a growth in positive gay role models, from Ellen DeGeneres to TV shows like 'Will and Grace' to openly gay public officials. Youth are seeing that you can be out and be a healthy, happy citizen.

We were 0-9 last year. For us, it's just trying to turn the program around.

We knew we'd have a tough season (last year), but we knew the future would be promising.

Due to the vast quantity of material, it will take some time to review them all, but so far we have observed no celebrities, no politicians, no senior police officers, members of the clergy, or sporting figures on any of the images.

It's going to be whoever runs the hardest each night.

They will be drawn from the existing homicide teams and from the divisions. We will be looking for first class investigators, who have a proven good investigative track record and, above all, professionalism and integrity.

I'll be happy to take on John O'Neill.

He's an extremely tough kid, hits hard on defense and he can run a little bit. So right now I still have not established who my starting tailback is. It could take a few games.

I am more optimistic than most we can achieve change. True. I have not been here to see 30 years of deterioration - but I know there are proven police mechanisms, and that when put in place, things will get better.

He became almost a parody of himself, if you recall that black hat he wore in Arizona while brandishing the assault weapon.

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

You really have one bite at the apple.

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

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.

There's no question that there's been a breach in the trust between urban - especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.

They're still a subject beholden to special interests, but at least they have a national constituency. At least they have to think about national majorities.

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

[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.

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.

We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests.

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.

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.

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.

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 Sheldon Adelsons, the Koch brothers, the George Soroses, what we want to try to do is force them into the parties, not so that Kasich or whoever is going to straight to them and trying to kiss up to special interests, but so the parties have the power and they can direct the money.

Let's give the president some due.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Washington is a city of money. It's a flood of money.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling.

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II.

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.

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.

The people who are rising, they're super ambitious. They have relationships with people above them. They have relationships, hierarchical, sort of people below them. A lot of people do not have relationships horizontally. And there's a lot of people who reach high political offices, but who are weirdly lonely, weirdly lacking in intimacy skills.

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.

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.

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.

There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.

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.

Politics, they all - talked to the insiders.

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.

The studies that show the reason Washington real estate is booming and there are so many lobbyists in town, it does pay.

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.

Benjamin Netanyahu is no Winston Churchill. Whatever else he, is he's not a Winston Churchill. He basically violated the great rule, which is it's better to mislead the people and to lose an election than to mislead the people and win an election.

The Republicans, they are in the danger of rooting for the country to fail. They look bad that way, I mean, and I want to say to them, cheer up, Republicans. Eventually, things will get worse.

Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

Tim Kaine kind of gives the warmer, human face of the Democrats.

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

The Democratic Party is a coalition. Its strength and its weakness is, it's a coalition of interest groups, caucuses. It's a lot less homogeneous than the Republican Party, where people tend to believe the same things and oftentimes look alike.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

Tim Kaine reminds me of - Peter Hart.Tim Kaine is a good neighbor. He's kind of the dependable, you know, friendly, helpful. And, you know, he would be over there. He would give you a hand if there were a problem at the house.

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.

When you have got military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, they're intended for one purpose. And that is to inflict as much damage on human beings in as short as time as possible.

The reality is that the Republicans twice had Mitt Romney as a potential nominee. They chose him in 2008 - 2012. In 2008 and 2012, he had been the most get tough on illegal immigrants, on undocumented immigrants, illegals, as he called them, accused John McCain of wanting to give them Social Security checks, accused Mike Huckabee selling out to them with the DREAM Act in Arkansas, was really the most strident.

The Republicans are looking at a country that is going to be a majority minority country in just over a generation. And they are an increasingly white party.

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

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.

There is no question that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan had been portrayed as a war-monger, somebody who couldn't do anything off a script. And the one debate with President Jimmy Carter, he stood toe-to-toe and reassured people that he wasn't bound and determined to start World War III on the spot and could make a coherent statement.

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

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.