Politics & Power Quote by Mark Shields

American campaigns have a reliable ritual: stop by a VFW hall, drape yourself in reverence, speak in soft-focus gratitude. Mark Shields, the genial but unsparing journalist, is pointing at that ritual’s machinery. His line works because it names what politics usually tries to pass off as sincerity: the fact that admiration for veterans is one of the few bipartisan scripts left, a safe credential no consultant would advise skipping.

The intent isn’t to diminish veterans; it’s to indict politicians for making them a prop. Shields’ phrasing, "everybody does the same thing", is the tell. It collapses ideological differences into a single choreography, suggesting that when rhetoric becomes universal, it stops being expressive and starts being compulsory. And compulsory praise is rarely about the praised. It’s about the speaker signaling belonging to the national faith.

The subtext is transactional. Veterans become moral capital: mention them and you borrow their sacrifice to launder your own ambition. Gratitude, in this light, isn’t a feeling but a campaign asset, deployed precisely because it’s hard to argue against without seeming unpatriotic. Shields is also diagnosing a deeper problem: when politics treats veteran care as a talking point rather than a policy agenda, the emotional tribute substitutes for material responsibility.

Contextually, Shields spent decades watching candidates cycle through the same symbolic gestures. His observation lands as a weary media note and a civic warning: when everyone sounds identical, democracy gets theater instead of accountability.