Bernadette Malone: Remembering political junkie Bob Novak

Former Union Leader editorial page writer Bernadette Malone remembers a reporter who happened to publish on the editorial pages.

Even in my 20s, I didn't have the stamina to follow Bob Novak around. He read every national newspaper by 8 a.m. -- in the days before the Internet! He would have breakfast at the Army-Navy Club in downtown Washington with a source. By 9:30 a.m., he would be at his Pennsylvania Avenue office, making phone calls to nail down his story. For lunch, another source, another meal at the Army-Navy Club . . . or maybe on Capitol Hill.

His staff would hear typing all afternoon from behind his closed door -- and then, without warning -- the sound of the printer! The column was finished! He would race out the door by 6 p.m., jump in his black convertible Corvette, and -- during the years I worked for him -- speed off to CNN to appear on Inside Politics, or Crossfire, or Evans & Novak or The Capital Gang. He'd perhaps pick up a new story idea in the makeup room from one of his high-powered television guests. And the cycle would begin again.

He once told me that he and his late partner, Rowland Evans Jr., endeavored to give their readers five new bits of information in every column. As someone who has tried column writing on this very page, I can tell you it's difficult to give readers even one fact they haven't already learned in the paper's news section.

Broder on Novak

In the Washington Post, David Broder looks at the loss Bob Novak, the last of a generation of political reporter.

And before that, he was one of the three best political reporters of the 1960s. The other two were Alan L. Otten and Paul Duke, and the remarkable thing is that all three of them were working at the same time in the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

Duke, who became the beloved moderator of PBS's "Washington Week," died four years ago. Otten, who adopted me on my first presidential campaign in 1960 and became the best mentor anyone could ever have, died two weeks ago.

And now Novak is gone. When I heard word of his death on Tuesday, it struck me that we are not likely to see their likes again. Collected from separate corners, Illinois (Novak), New York (Otten) and Virginia (Duke), they were assembled here by editors who had a passionate commitment to covering Congress and politics as if the decisions being debated really mattered. (more)

Bob Novak R.I.P.

Legendary political reporter and columnist Robert Novak has died at the age of 78.

Chicago Sun-Times

Firmly planted in the print world with his widely read syndicated thrice-a-week column, Bob also was an innovator in the electronic media. With the CNN programs “Capital Gang” and “Crossfire,” Bob pioneered the brash, no-holds-barred public affairs programming so familiar to viewers of cable news television today.

But more than that, his contributions to the great debates of the day demonstrated that Bob was someone who thought deeply about his country, its system of government and the challenges both faced. For example, in his 2000 book Completing the Revolution: A Vision for Victory in 2000, Bob offered his views on how America should build on the freedom legacy of President Reagan. (more)

Washington Post

Until the Plame controversy, Novak had largely been known as a strong anti-Communist in his foreign policy views. He also was an leading advocate of supply-side economics, a belief that tax cuts would lead to widespread financial prosperity.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union lobbying organization, said that Novak helped transform supply-side economics from a fringe idea into a tenet of President Ronald Reagan's economic policy. Keene called Novak "a giant of the profession" who "gave respectability and visibility to conservative ideas and positions in the 1970s, when they were mostly dismissed."

Human Events

For those who believed the Cold War should be won, Novak’s Sonnenfeldt Doctrine column was a gift that kept on giving. Eight years later I was director of the Reagan Administration’s Voice of America when top State Department official Lawrence Eagleburger summoned me to his office. He was enraged by tough VOA editorials damning Polish strongman Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski as being “Soviet imposed” on the people of Poland.