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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.

Mark Shields

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Mark Shields
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 25
Columnist
Writer
Weymouth
Massachusetts
Mark Stephen Shields
Firsts
Boss
First
Presses
Every
Press
Things
Considered
Humor
Wonderful
Flagrantly
American
Assures
Sense
Secretary

More quotes by Mark Shields

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That's what the conservative movement has become, is basically an annex of the [Donald] Trump campaign.
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The Democrats have to do what he did when [Rahm Emanuel] was chairman of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, recruit veterans, recruit football players, recruit business people. And I think that's what the job of the new party chair has to be.
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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.
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If you only make fights that you're going to win, there would be no women's vote in America, there would be no civil rights laws in the country.
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Donald Trump, I hate to tell people who are concerned about it, is not going to be impeached. The American people believe in giving somebody a fair chance. He's a new president. There have been troubles, there have been problems.
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The Democrats have tried the war against women in the past. It didn't really have that much traction.
Mark Shields
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I thought what Steve Bannon said was probably more chilling or more threatening than anything the president [Donald Trump]says, I mean, because he said, it's a constant day. We have to defeat the press.
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[Donald] Trump is instructive.For Trump, it was that the global economy and the international world order were failing regular people.
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Something really serious has shifted in the minds of Republicans and certainly others.
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The argument of those who are being criticized at any time, the civil rights movement forward, the anti-war movement forward, is, it's always outside agitators doing it.
Mark Shields
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The final thing the Tea Party had was, they fed into the philosophy that Donald Trump now embodies. So they had a different view of how the world should be governed. And so they had a lot of things that we didn't appreciate going for them as time went by.
Mark Shields
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[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.
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The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.
Mark Shields
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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.
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I mean, this is a group [Republicans], don't forget, that gave its presidential straw ballot to Ron Paul, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul and Rand Paul. So, they have abandoned what - their libertarian values and instincts to embrace [Donald] Trump.
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The person you're choosing is going to be 90 feet down the hall for four years. That's a pretty intimate and close relationship, and it better be somebody you're comfortable with, you like, you trust, you look forward to seeing, not someone you're coming up with creative ideas on how to avoid.
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There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling.
Mark Shields