Presidential adviser turned TV pundit was 83

David Gergen, a political analyst for CNN and PBS who also served as an adviser to four U.S. presidents, died Thursday at a retirement community in Lexington, Mass. He was 83.

His son, Christopher, confirmed the news to the The New York Times and said the cause was Lewy body dementia.

Gergen was born May 9, 1942, in Durham, N.C., where he was also raised, before eventually going to Yale, where he graduated in 1963 with a degree in American Studies. During his time at the Ivy League school, Gergen served as managing editor of the student newspaper, and also worked in the summers as an intern for North Carolina’s Democratic governor at the time, Terry Sanford, where he first cut his teeth in the world of politics.

He went on to get a degree in law from Harvard in 1967, and then served in the Navy for more than three years. His contacts there got him a job writing in President Nixon’s administration, which would become the first of four adviser roles Gergen would serve. He would go on to advise presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton in different capacities, making Gergen the rare cross-party adviser.

Of this distinct honor, Gergen once told The Boston Globe he identified as “a radical moderate.” “Centrism doesn’t mean splitting the difference,’” he said in 2020. “It’s about seeking solutions and you bring people along. I’m happily in that role. Working for Bill Clinton helped liberate me so I could have my own voice. I could say what I thought, as opposed to worrying whether there are five senators from this party or that party who are going to be very angry and I have to toe the line.”

Gergen was also a successful author, writing about his White House duties in the best-selling 2000 book Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. More recently, he wrote Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made.

Putting his Yale student paper days to use, Gergen ventured into journalism in 1978, when he became managing editor of Public Opinion. By the mid-’80s, Gergen was the editor of U.S. News & World Reportand also a columnist there. This led to a very successful foray into political analysis — he served as frequent TV commentator for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS and was a mainstay on CNN throughout his career.

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Gergen also was a professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School.

In addition to his son, Gergen is survived by his wife, Anne; his daughter, Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett; two brothers, John and Kenneth; and five grandchildren.