David Gergen, trusted Washington stalwart who advised 4 presidents, dead at 83

David Gergen, who worked for four presidents, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, before becoming an academic and political TV pundit, has died.

He was 83. 

Gergen died in a retirement home in Massachusetts on July 10, his son said, according to several outlets. 

The Washington, D.C., veteran had been suffering from Lewy body dementia, his son said. 

Those who knew and admired Gergen took to X to express their condolences. 

Former California first lady Maria Shriver wrote on X: “David Gergen was total professional and a really kind man. My thoughts are with his family. He loved politics and he loved being in service to this country.”

“RIP, Mr. Gergen,” CBS reporter Robert Costa wrote. 

Former Democratic Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. wrote: “We lost a good one, a really good one – RIP, my friend David Gergen.” 

Gergen came up with the line that then-candidate Reagan said in the 1980 election: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” according to The New York Times. 

He later said of the line: “Rhetorical questions have great power.” 

Of his time with the Nixon administration, Gergen told the Washington Post in 1981, “I was young, and I was too naive. It hardened me up a lot. It was an extremely difficult experience emotionally, in terms of belief in people.” 

After leaving public office, Gergen worked as an editor and columnist, as well as for the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the liberal Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He was also a commentator for PBS, CNN and NPR. 

“To say that I rely on him is an understatement,” Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff, James A. Baker III, told The Washington Post in 1981.

“He’s the best conceptualizer, in terms of communications strategy, that we have.”