Commentary : Political Opposites Sometimes Attract

David Gergen and Mark Shields have a marriage made in heaven. In the often fractious world of TV political discourse, their pairing may be the most harmonic since Simon and Garfunkel.

Sure, your taste for Washington chinfests may run to weeknight tag-team wrestling led by Michael Kinsley (“on the left!”) and John Sununu (“on the right!”) on CNN’s “Crossfire.”

Perhaps your cup of tea is the Sunday morning free-for-all of NBC’s “McLaughlin Group,” a combative half-hour where words become blunt weapons deployed in force.

Such programs have their charms. Goodness know there’s nothing wrong with a little blood spilled between consenting pundits. But, taking a different tack, Gergen and Shields say, try a little tenderness.

The two were fused together a bit more than four years ago when public television’s “MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour” brought them together to provide analysis for the 1988 presidential campaign.

Bush won. Dukakis lost. Gergen and Shields never left. A regular Friday feature on the “Newshour” ever since, their services are also retained on special occasions, including this week’s GOP convention.

Gergen, editor at large for the conservative news weekly U.S. News and World Report, served as communications director for Ronald Reagan, as special assistant to Gerald Ford and as speechwriter to Richard Nixon during their respective presidencies.

Shields, a syndicated newspaper columnist, has played leading roles in the presidential campaigns of political southpaws such as Robert Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Morris Udall (he also appears on CNN’s “Capital Gang”).

Gergen is thus implicitly the resident conservative, Shields the liberal, and clashes would seem inevitable.

But what’s this?

“I think Mark is absolutely right on that,” Gergen will say cheerfully.

“David’s absolutely right,” a chipper Shields will say a while later.

In a heartening display in this divisive political season, Gergen and Shields choose consensus-building over one-upmanship. They are generally willing to set aside partisanship and talk turkey about the business of politics, building on each other’s observations rather than undermining them.

A few weeks ago Gergen hailed Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton. “Give him credit for what he’s done,” Gergen said. “He’s endured and he’s rebounding.”

As with other successful TV pairings (Johnny and Ed, Siskel and Ebert, Regis and Kathie Lee), no one but the video gods could have forecast just how well Gergen and Shields would click. Don’t look for Sesame Street on a map of D.C., but this pair of pundits is the Beltway Bert and Ernie.

Albeit without Bert’s beetle-brow and frenetic style, Gergen plays the straight man, usually solemn and speaking in hushed, almost priestly, tones.

The animated, bespectacled Shields looks like a Muppet come to life, and along with his shrewd insights he offers a welcome light touch.

One of the last, best refuges from the Geraldo-izing of TV talk, “The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour” sometimes gets too starchy for its own good, but during Gergen and Shields segments, the show relaxes a bit, as if the chaperones at the high school dance had slipped outside for a smoke.