Mark Shields
The Tea Party thing is only apt in some ways. The activism in the town halls, that looks superficially like it. But what the Tea Party did was, they went after the party, the Republican Party, as their vehicle. And parties is how you change history.Collection: Party
I think Donald Trump is not going to be impeached [in a ] month. Let's not close out possibilities.I do think that what's happening is great and that people are active and people are just involved in the democratic process.Collection: Thinking
The problem is that every study I'm aware of, which is probably not that many, has indicated that a dollar spent in preparation and avoidance of natural disasters is worth $15 that is spent in relief. But there's no political payoff for preparation. So, who benefits? I mean, the governor or senator or the president? Bill Clinton at Oklahoma City, his performance there helped him enormously. And there really hasn't been any regulation that would, in fact, interfere with environmental disaster.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Interesting
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 higher marks... The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack.Collection: Jobs
I think Guantanamo, has been synonymous with the staining of American values and American legal tradition.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Broken
The studies that show the reason Washington real estate is booming and there are so many lobbyists in town, it does pay.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Lobbyists
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.Collection: Brother
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.Collection: Thinking
I'm a little nervous about public funding. It's better than what we got now.Collection: Littles
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.Collection: Winning
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Thinking
Human trafficking is a human tragedy. It's an outrage against any decent people.Collection: People
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.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Country
Washington is a city of money. It's a flood of money.Collection: Cities
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Lonely
He who speaks the truth must keep one foot in the stirrup.Collection: Feet
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.Collection: Powerful
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.Collection: War
If Mitt Romney had got the percentage Ronald Reagan did of Hispanics, he would have defeated Barack Obama.Collection: Defeated
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Dream
You really have one bite at the apple.Collection: Apples
The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Party
[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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Successful
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.Collection: Ideas
[Dwight Eisenhower was ] a citizen of the world.Collection: World
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.Collection: America
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.Collection: Party
Something really serious has shifted in the minds of Republicans and certainly others.Collection: Mind
[The Republicans] looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.Collection: War
I think the Republican Party is cursed. And it's cursed itself.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Personality
I personally believe that [Donald Trump] is wrong on the condition of America.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Thinking
To me, the fundamental thing - well, I guess I see a lot of people debating in the wrong way. A lot of the debate is, should we go to the coasts, should we go to the center, should we go to the left, should we go to the right?Collection: People
American education will be determined by the quality of American public education, and that's public schools that are available.Collection: School
There is always strength in numbersCollection: Numbers
President [John F.] Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs.Collection: Country