This might not quite translate as it comes from a half-formed sense, a deep hunch maybe, but it seems somehow fitting that as Reader’s Digest enters bankruptcy, my old boss Bob Novak has lost his battle with a brain tumor.
Bob and his longtime partner, the indefatigably debonair Rowland Evans Jr., were frequent contributors to the Digest, both because it paid very well and because the mag’s massive circulation connected them to the broad middle of America. And it was this group they wrote and reported for, delivering the “inside story” otherwise locked up inside the Beltway, deep in a committee, three rings inside the Pentagon, or whispered in the clubby confines of the Fed.
Remembrances of Bob are absolutely correct to note his conservatism. Yes, he was a conservative. But above and beyond that, he was fair. He did not believe it was fair for America’s governing elites — no matter the party — to say one thing to the public, and turn around and do another thing in private. Bob positively delighted in exposing little inside deals and contradictions. Nothing was more dangerous to DC pretense and cant than Bob Novak with a phone, his Rolodex, and an old copy of Who’s Who in America. I know, I saw it first hand during the five years I spent working for him in a cramped, fire marshal’s nightmare of an office two blocks from the White House.
I date my time with Evans & Novak from immediately after George H. Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge in mid-1990. Fair also describes Bob’s performance expectations — he expected you to get the job done without much interest as to how or when.
“Let me give you piece of advice, the only advice I give anyone,” he once said out of the blue. “Cut back on your sleep.”
After my first week on the job, Bob unexpectedly took me to lunch. I thought it was your standard, welcome aboard deal. Wrong.
Soon after we slid into a choice booth at the Palm, hip-deep in K Street lobbyists, Bob looks at me and announces, “Well, you got the job. This is a sink or swim business and not everyone can swim.”
Turns out my first week was just an extended audition. You could either do the work or not, fair is fair.
And the work, to be clear, was reporting. It was finding out the truth the best that you could and passing that on to a wider public. It was never about self-serving leaks from those in power. It took me awhile to know the difference and I got burned once or twice in the process.
Bob was well aware people were trying to use him for their own ends, but a leak in and of itself was not story. It had to be placed in some larger context which revealed something new to that broad America. This is what made the whole Valerie Plame fiasco such a joke to me. Of course, Bob reported the odd intersection of allegiances which surrounded a purported independent investigation into nuclear proliferation. What else does a reporter do?
And it is the art of reporting that I think died a little with the passing of Bob Novak. The mid-term election of 1994 is a perfect example.
Various Democrat scandals in Congress along with a Bill Clinton overreach on health care set the stage for a good GOP year. Then the Contract with America provided a common GOP playbook. That was the background. The details came in talking to state party chairs, national committeemen, big donors, little talk radio players, and reading seven or eight newspapers a day.
That’s what I did helping to write and assemble the Evans & Novak Political Report, the newsletter which Bob and Rowlie started in 1967 and kept going until Bob’s illness forced its end earlier this year. We’d pull all this information together and try to make sense of it, no predetermined spin or agenda.
Starting in the summer of ’94 things were pointing in the same direction, voters were mad and the GOP was gaining traction. I recall sitting down with Bob to go over ENPR’s final pre-election prediction, papers and notes spread out all over the tiny conference room.
“I think the Republicans are gonna do it,” I told him.
“I think you are right,” Bob shot back. “But what about…”
He then launched into 10 or 12 of the closest make or break races, rattling off the latest dope he picked up, trying to square that with any remotely objective polling, stuff I’d heard, and a couple decades of his gut feelings about political momentum.
A few minutes later we wound up at a 45 seat GOP gain in the House along with GOP control of the Senate, enough to swing Congress Republican — an insanely out-of-step prediction at the time. Virtually all DC reporters and commentators were predicting some Republican gains, maybe even control of the Senate. None were predicting a Republican House.
Bob could’ve ducked what the reporting told him and played it safe. Instead, he went on CNN and told the world his best take on what was going on in our world. Some of his Capital Gang cohorts laughed at him.
As it turned out, the GOP gained 54 seats in the House, eight in the Senate.
Bob was a reporter, he was fair. And he will be sorely missed by a world increasingly unfamiliar with either concept.
