He started as a legislative assistant to Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin.įrom 1988 until it was canceled in 2005, he was a moderator and panelist on “Capital Gang,” a weekly CNN talk show that matched liberals like Mr. He recalled that “the first time I ever saw my mother cry was the night that Adlai Stevenson lost in 1952.”Ī life immersed in politics began in earnest for him in the 1960s, not long after he had finished two years in the Marines. Truman as he was passing through Weymouth, the Massachusetts town south of Boston where they lived. In 1948, when he was 11, his parents roused him at 5 a.m.
Mark Shields, a piercing analyst of America’s political virtues and failings, first as a Democratic campaign strategist and then as a television commentator who both delighted and rankled audiences for four decades with his bluntly liberal views and sharply honed wit, died on Saturday at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. From a New York Times obit by Clyde Haberman headlined “Mark Shields, TV Pundit Known for His Sharp Wit, Dies at 85”:
