Mark Shields Biography
Mark Stephen Shield better known as Mark Shields is an American political columnist and commentator. He was born on May 25th, 1937 in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
He has provided weekly political analysis as well as commentary for PBS NewsHour. He works together with David Brooks for The New York Times. He was also a regular panel member on Inside Washington. This is a weekly public affair show that aired on both PBS and ABC till it was terminated in December 2013.
He has been a moderator and panelist on CNN’s, Capital Gang, for 17 years. He is from an Irish Catholic family. He attended the University of Notre Dame and graduated in 1959.
Mark Shields Age
He was born on May 25th, 1937 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. He is 82 years old as of 2019.
Mark ShieldsMark Shields Wife
He is married to Anne Hudson Shields, a lawyer and former civil service official at the United States Department of the Interior. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Mark Shields Daughter
He has a daughter, Amy Hudson Shields, who is a graduate of Duke University and a television producer.
Shields Net Worth
His net worth is still under review.
Mark Shields Career | Mark Shields PBS NewsHour
He used to work as an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps in Florida in the early 1960s. He was discharged in 1962 but before that, he was a lance corporal. He moved to Washington DC. in 1965 and became an aide to Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire.
He then went to work for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968. He then had presidential campaigns for Edmund Muskie and Morris Udall. He was also the political advisor for Sargent Shriver when he was running for Vice President on the Democratic ticket back in 1972.
For more than a decade, he helped in managing state and local campaigns in some 38 states. This included Boston, Massachusetts and Mayor Kevin White’s successful re-election campaign back in 1975. He then joined The Washington Post in 1979 and became an editorial writer.
In the same year, he started writing a column that’s now distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. He has covered the last 12 presidential campaigns and attended 24 national party conventions. He has also been involved in teaching politics and the press at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
He was also a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government. He is a regular political commentator on PBS NewsHour. Shields is the author of On the Campaign Trail, about the 1984 presidential campaign.
The Wall Street Journal has called Mark Shields “the wittiest political examiner around” and “often the most trenchant, reasonable, and mindful.” The Washington Post has called Shields “a mobile chronicle of American legislative issues.” His bits of knowledge is direct and up-to-the-moment, drawn from four many years of knowing, covering and appreciating the nation and its governmental issues.
A broadly known writer and analyst, Shields has worked in Washington through the organizations of nine U.S. Presidents. He was an article essayist for The Washington Post where he started composing his segment in 1979. That section is presently dispersed broadly by Creators Syndicate.
Since 1988, Shields has given week after week political examination and critique on national battles for PBS’ grant-winning “The PBS NewsHour” where he has coordinated minds with David Gergen, The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot, and, since 2001, with David Brooks of The New York Times. For a long time, Shields was mediator and specialist on CNN’s Capital Gang. He presently is a standard specialist on Inside Washington, the week after week open undertakings show which is seen on both ABC and PBS.
A local of Weymouth, Mass., and an alum of the University of Notre Dame, Shields filled in as an enrolled man in the United States Marine Corps before coming to Washington where he started working in 1965 for Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire.
In 1968, Shields got down to business for Robert F. Kennedy in the New York Senator’s presidential battle and later held initiative situations in three other presidential crusades. More than 11 years, Shields oversaw battles from the town hall to the White House in somewhere in the range of 38 states.
Notwithstanding going to 21 national gathering shows and dealing with or covering the last 13 presidential races, Shields has trained American legislative issues and the press at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Public Policy and he was an individual at Harvard’s Kennedy Institute of Politics.
“On the Campaign Trail,” his book on the 1984 presidential crusade, has been adulated as “entertaining,” “disrespectful,” and “for carrying that race to glorious light.”
Mark Shields Column | America’s Urgent Need for Baseball Today
In America today and in its capital city of Washington, D.C., we see, sadly, that with enough money and influence, the fix can be put in. A widely used passenger plane model — whose safety standards were certified by the manufacturer — had to be grounded after separate crashes took 346 lives.
According to the sworn testimony of the president’s personal attorney, in the closing days of the last White House campaign, a six-figure hush-money payoff went to the current president’s alleged mistress. Citizens learn that the game is not on the level.
Nor is the fix limited to Inside the Beltway. Without rich, connected, corrupt parents willing to bribe college coaches and officials to get their unqualified offspring enrolled at prestigious schools, hard-working, qualified high school students receive letters of rejection rather than acceptance from those corrupted universities. Why? Because the fix was in.
In the summer of 2019, America urgently needs baseball because, as a team owner and American original Bill Veeck accurately observed: “Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.”
Veeck was right. In baseball, it doesn’t make any difference how big a six-figure soft-money check you anonymously wrote to a powerful public official if you can’t hit a curveball. Social connections and private school pedigrees count for nothing in the bottom of the ninth when the tying run is on third base.
Speaking of which, America’s Pulitzer Prize-winning and -deserving sports writer “Red” Smith captured the genius of the game when he wrote, “The ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.”
Think about it: Today, some two centuries after the baseball diamond was so designed, the race from the batter’s box to first base — after the hitter hits the ball on the ground to an infielder — still ends almost always in a photo finish.
That 90-foot distance means that the mound from which the pitcher tries to throw the ball by the hitter is 60 feet, 6 inches away. If it were a few feet farther away, the hitter would be at an advantage; if it were a few feet closer, the pitcher could overwhelm the batter.
Baseball rejects the responsibility-avoiding passive tense. No “mistakes were made” when a batted ball goes directly through the shortstop’s legs. In baseball, “Smith makes an error” brings immediate and public accountability, often in the disapproving boos of fans — even thousands of them — in the stands.
Baseball is about standards that are universally accepted. It is now 78 years since Ted Williams was the last baseball player to hit over .400 (he hit .406) for a season. In that same year, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, a record that has never been seriously challenged.
But is baseball, the sport with no clock, too slow and too leisurely for this hyped-up era? Once again, we turn to Red Smith. In response to noisy criticism about the dullness of baseball from sports broadcaster Howard Cosell, Smith said, “Baseball is a dull game for dull minds.” The defense rests.
Mark Shields On the Campaign Trail
Traces the developments in the 1984 presidential election campaign
Title On the Campaign Trail: Wise and Witty Dispatches from the Front Lines of the 1984 Presidential Race with Cartoons by Ten of the Nation’s Leading Political Cartoonists
Author Mark Shields
Edition illustrated
Publisher Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1985
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized 22 Sep 2008
ISBN 0912697210, 9780912697215
Length of 108 pages