Mark Shields Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

That's what the conservative movement has become, is basically an annex of the [Donald] Trump campaign.

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

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

I do think, over the last years, a lot of Republicans have decided it's not working, what the party believed in, free trade, global capitalism, open borders.

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

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.

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.

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

There is a cleavage and a divide in America like I have never seen before.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The problem is that what Donald Trump said, if you take it literally now, is cause for anxiety and nervousness.

[The Republicans] looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.

Something really serious has shifted in the minds of Republicans and certainly others.

Donald Trump defies gravity. And so I guess he has to be Donald Trump. It's gotten him so far.

I think Hillary Clinton - first of all, it's a great victory, acknowledge it. She has made history.

Richard Nixon said it best. It makes no difference whether they hold your nose or whether they go would through a wall to vote for you. It counts the same with the X.

Tim Kaine didn't come across authentic. It wasn't good. And it was - it just really - I think, for short-term benefit, I think the Democrats tarnished the brand, which is an awfully good brand.

America's exceptionalism, American leadership, the American model, the American values are not [first with Donald Trump] - they're something that end at the border.

[Dwight Eisenhower was ] a citizen of the world.

[Donald trump] is moved from the enemy being Barack Obama, now gone, fading is Hillary Clinton, and there is no question he's chosen the enemy.

[Hillary] Clinton is much more embracing of the global economy and the international world order. [Ben] Sanders and [Scott] Warren are much less so.

Basically, global capitalism, basically to support it, or is it to be opposed? Is international order to be supported, or is it to be opposed? Republicans have taken a very clear line.

Democrats can have a different version of the line, or they can just say, no, we are the party of international peace and activism, and we're the party that's going to have a civilized capitalism.

Lee Atwater,[Ronald] Reagan's strategist, had no patience for CPAC, because he thought they were sort of wild and immature, basically.

It's interesting how identity politics and Ann Coulter-style tactics have now blossomed. But they were always there in CPAC.

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.

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

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.

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

Politics, they all - talked to the insiders.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You really have one bite at the apple.