David Gergen

David Gergen, a staunch advocate of bipartisan work in politics who served as advisor to four presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, died July 10, 2025, of Lewy body dementia in Lexington, Massachusetts at the age of 83.

Gergen's political career began in 1971 under President Richard Nixon and continued through the 1990s, a span during which he also advised President Gerald Ford, along with Reagan and Clinton (as well as future President George H.W. Bush before he ascended to the White House). He later became a respected political commentator who warned viewers and readers against the deep political divisions that have come to dominate U.S. politics, urging instead a bipartisan approach to solving the nation's ills.

"David is one of the few people I know who successfully spanned decades of politics – and did so, not because he was hanging on, rather because we all wanted to hear his thoughts, his experiences, his reasoning and he always wanted to hear ours," journalist and television anchor Dana Bash said on Facebook. "While David hailed from a different generation ... he never got caught in the past, instead he used his unmatched experiences to help contextualize the present and look to the future."

Gergen was the son of Duke University professor John Jay Gergen and Aubigne Munger. Before entering politics, he was a journalist and managing editor of the Yale Daily News, then interned with North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford before spending three years in the U.S. Navy.

His work with Nixon began when he was a staff assistant to speechwriter Ray Price. He was quickly tapped to direct a group of other writers. He was later Director of Communications for Ford, then worked with the Bush campaign in 1980. After Reagan's win, he moved to the White House as Director of Communications. As a testament to his belief that both major political parties working together is the best approach to governance, in 1993, he joined the Clinton White House.

"Centrism doesn't mean splitting the difference," he once said to The Boston Globe. "It's about seeking solutions, and you bring people along. I'm happily in that role."

When he left politics, Gergen returned to journalism – though in truth he never left that world, for a time serving as an editor with "U.S. News & World Report" and managing editor of Public Opinion magazine, as well as regularly appearing on the PBS program "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." In his post-Clinton years, he was a regular guest on NPR, "Face the Nation" on CBS, and as a guest with Anderson Cooper on CNN. His message remained consistent: the rhetorical divides in our politics are bad for the nation and bad for its citizens, a sharp contrast to the politicians who lived through World War II and who saw cooperation as a better route to national success.

Over the years, Gergen served on a wide array of boards and bodies, including those affiliated with Yale, Duke, and Harvard universities, the Aspen Institute, World Economic Forum, Center for Global Development, and many more.

"He spent fifty years in Washington and left never having made an enemy of anyone. Think of that," Bill Curry, former advisor to President Bill Clinton, said on Facebook, while political analyst David Axelrod said that Gergen serving under four different presidents, and from both major parties, "speaks to the talent and the insights that he had."

"David's insight into politics and the world was always worth hearing," author and producer Wendy Walker said on Facebook. "He had the rare respect of both sides of the aisle – because he worked with both, and always spoke with clarity, wisdom, and grace. Even in recent years, any time he appeared after a major event, I'd stop everything just to hear his take. We've lost a true voice of reason, and a genuinely good man."

By Eric San Juan

(Image: Larry French/Getty Images for The Jefferson Awards Foundation)