Mark Shields Quotes

There’s so much in the papers about Ronald Reagan and it looks like he’s on his way to become president, it does look scary.

Take the [1980] Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate. Carter kept trying to imply that somehow Ronald Reagan was going to push the button, or was irresponsible with nuclear war. You might have been able to make the case that Carter was responsible. But it's very tough when you see a person with Reagan's nice-guy persona up there to believe this guy somehow wants nuclear war, that he somehow wants to antagonize the Russians into an attack. It's just not credible; it doesn't cut with what all your other senses are telling you.

Let me start off by saying that in 2000 I said, 'Vote for me. I'm an agent of change.' In 2004, I said, 'I'm not interested in change - I want to continue as president.' Every candidate has got to say 'change.' That's what the American people expect.

Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.

Ronald Reagan's advisors know that if he goes to sleep for even five minutes during the second debate, he'll be in trouble.

A few. . . critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.

To Ronald Wilson Regan, The Fortieth President of The United States: The Man Who Won The War.

Have you ever had any anger about President Bush - who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard - running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam? You have to be at least irritated by that, or have you been?

The campaign for the White House is heating up with John Kerry taking heat for throwing his Vietnam medals away, getting a $1000 haircut, and wearing a 1970s wig known as 'the Leno.' There are really two sides to this story. And America can't wait for Kerry to present both of them.

President Bush is not fazed by other candidates' war records. He said, I may have not fought in Vietnam, but I created one.

When you're running for president you have to take some risks and you've got to show people something fresh and you've got to stay interesting.

Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan.

Hillary Clinton calls our people deplorable, a large group, and irredeemable. I will be a president for all of our people.

People are taking a closer look at Donald Trump. I think the best look they got was at the last debate. I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio prosecuted their case effectively. Donald doesn't have some great answers. When they talk, for instance, about immigration and releasing those tapes from The New York Times, we began talking about flexibility and immigration.

Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. In the minds of politicians, perhaps more than anywhere, the notion of a million dollars has this accordion-like ability to expand or contract; if they are disposing of it, the million is a pleasing sum, reflecting warmly upon themselves; if somebody else wants it, it becomes a figure of inordinate size, not to be compassed by the rational mind.

Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...'

If a President must constantly remind the people that we're at war, then we're not.

Donald Trump, when he gives his speeches, talks like a populist. And he talks to middle class and working America and poor people. But when he governs, at least in his first 40 days, he governs like a hard-right guy.

It's like in politics: You can have great intentions for the world, but if you're not a good speaker and if you're not the sort of person that people can intimately link with, then it makes it very easy to say, "Well, they're not a nice person."

We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership.

Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.

I think that Donald Trump has faced an unprecedented avalanche of critical coverage when he was running and frankly, I think, it in part he owes his victory to that.

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often.