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I promised some weeks ago to produce a ‘book review’ of Robert D. Novak’s book, ‘The Prince of Darkness; 50 Years Reporting in Washington’. Where do you start on a 662 page book? Maybe something about the author in case you do not know him. Robert started reporting in Washington back when Eisenhower was in office. He is generally considered a conservative but being a hawk had neo-con tendencies. Novak knew all the movers and shakers in Washington for the past 50 years. For more on Robert you can check out his Wikipedia page.

Robert David Sanders “Bob” Novak (February 26, 1931 – August 18, 2009) was a syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator. Born to working class Ukrainian/Lithuanian secular Jews in Joliet, Illinois, Novak went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI) and worked for two newspapers before serving for the U.S. Army in the Korean War. He then became a reporter for the Associated Press and then for The Wall Street Journal. He teamed up with Rowland Evans in 1963 to start Inside Report, which became the longest running syndicated political column in U.S. history and ran in hundreds of papers. They also started the Evans-Novak Political Report, a notable biweekly newsletter, in 1967.

Novak and Evans played a significant role for CNN after the network’s founding. He worked as a well-known television personality in programs such as The Capital Gang, Crossfire, and Evans, Novak, Hunt, & Shields. He also wrote for numerous other publications such as Reader’s Digest. On August 4, 2008, Novak announced that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, that his prognosis was “dire”, and that he was retiring. He succumbed to the disease on August 18, 2009 after having returned home to spend his last days with his family.

In ‘Prince of Darkness’ I got the impression that Novak was being candid and forthright. He had criticisms for himself as well as others. The man was a hard drinker and smoker in his earlier years and did not appear to be shy about asserting himself, if need be. I believe he was respected by his peers, even if they did not agree with his opinions or analysis. I also got the impression that Robert was not the easiest man to befriend. Probably in part because of the politicians he had to deal with. He worked amongst some of the most self-serving, dishonest, and power seeking individuals.

As to the book, I can not recommend it enough, particularly if you are a relative novice to politics. There were many, many interesting antidotes and eye-openers. Even though the book was long, I came away wanting more. Mr. Novak writes well and can tell a good story. If you are interested in what happened in Washington during the past 50 years and want to obtain insight to the current players, you will want to read ‘Prince of Darkness’.

Rather than trying to summarize 50 years of work, I will give you excerpts that I thought most interesting. This will give you some insight to the people that even now play a role in politics. Buy the book to get the whole story.

Page 272-3 (hard-bound, 1st edition):

“On September 26, 1975, two months before he formally announced his candidacy, Reagan addressed the Chicago Executive Club and delivered a speech called “Let the People Rule” containing a Jeff Bell proposal: “Nothing less than a systematic transfer of authority and resources to the state.” Reagan suggested “welfare, education, housing, food stamps, Medicaid, community regional development, and revenue sharing to name a few.” This would “reduce the outlay of the federal government by more than $90 billion ($339 billion in 2007 dollars.)”

Only two reporters attended he speech, and only one put Bell’s proposal in his story. Joel Weisman, the Chicago stringer for the Washington Post, buried the “$90 billion plan” deep in hi report, which in turn as buried deep in he newspaper. It was a bad idea – unworkable, politically dangerous, and typical of old-fashioned conservatism. I didn’t even notice the plan, and hardly anybody else did except the sharp-eyed Stu Spencer. {Note that Novak thought giving power and control of finances back to the states was a bad idea and it was ‘old-fashioned conservatism’. If only we had more of that!}
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By the end of January, I wrote from Concord, New Hampshire, “the $90 billion monster was a shadow of its former self” – proposing only the transfer of a few selected programs. {I found it interesting how Reagan’s idea was ultimately killed in Washington.}

Page 322:

The other was Jude Wanniski, who, as associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote the paper’s tax editorials. Laffer told me that if I was interested in what he was telling me, I would not fully appreciate it until I read Wanniski’s new book, ‘The Way the World Works’.

No book other than ‘Witness’ by Whittaker Chambers has so influenced my political thinking. Just as Chambers shaped my darkening view of the West’s struggle or survival against the communist juggernaut, Wanniski pointed to the sunny uplands in the midst of Jimmy Carter’s malaise – when low growth, double-digit interest rates, constant inflation, and high unemployment seemed a permanent par to American economics. With brilliant analogies, Wanniski explained how stupidities of government led to economic disaster – and election defeats. Laffer called it “the best book on economics ever written,” but it also was a political book,… {I have ordered those two books as well as ‘Whittaker Chambers: A Biography’ by Sam Tanenhaus and ‘The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot’ by Russell Kirk. I will report on them as well when I get them read.}

Page 366:

We were being criticized or what columnists do. The real complaint with us was that we were taking conservative positions. ….

[James M.] Perry gave me a chance to explain in print why we had become such a target. “We are running against the grain of the conventional wisdom within the journalistic community,” I told him, adding this was particularly true of economic policy. Perry quoted me further: “Most journalists find it hard to abandon the viewpoints they have held for years. If supply-side economics works, it will be the death knell for much of the system this establishment has built up over the last 40 years.” {This is why, even today (particularly today) that supply-side economics is vilified.}

Page 367-368:

{For those who think President Reagan was on the light side intellectually consider the following from an interview Rowly and Novak had with Reagan in March of 1982 after President Reagan had been in office for two months.}
The purpose of our interview for a book {The Reagan Revolution} to be published six months later was to probe Reagan’s philosophy and his personal outlook as to how revolutionary his administration would and should be. Rowly asked which philosophical thinkers and writers had influenced him the most. “Oh, boy Rowly,” Reagan replied. Fearful Reagan was at loss, Rowly noted that President Carter “used to talk about Reinhold Niebuhr” and then mention, without a clear connection I thought, Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, and Spinoza. But those weren’t Regan’s models, and he didn’t need prompting. He was just collecting his thoughts.

Describing himself as a “voracious reader,” Reagan cited nineteenth-century British free trade advocates John Bright and Richard Cobden and twentieth-century Austrian free market economists Ludwig von Mises nd Friedrich von Hayek. He also said, “Bastiat has dominated my thinking so much.” Bastiat? Rowly and I had to look him up. Claude-Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French political economist who preached against protectionism and socialism. Later in the interview, Reagan talked about liberal clergymen who had been influenced by Reichenbach’s advocacy of big government taking care of the poor. Reichenbach? That sent Rowly and me back to the reference books to look up Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), a German philosopher who belonged to the Vienna Circle of legal positivists. Regan was better read and better educated than we were.

Without benefit of his famous three-by-five index cards or any notes, Reagan cited from memory budget statistics dating back to Eisenhower (totally accurate, we found, after we checked). More important than demonstrating an actor’s good memory was his personalized understanding of what supply-side economics was all about.

Novak: Why are you so convinced, Mr. President, that your tax rate reduction will work as a means of reviving the economy?
Reagan: ‘Cause it always has. It did when Kennedy did it. It did in the time of Coolidge. Andrew Mellon (President Coolidge’s Treasury Secretary) has written about the tax cuts and they worked . . . I take my own personal experience in (motion) pictures. I was in that exceedingly high tax bracket after World War II, and I know what I did. I would be offered scripts of additional pictures and, once I had reached that bracket, I just turned ‘em down. I wasn’t going to go to work for six cents on the dollar.

{Part II of ‘The Prince of Darkness’ to follow.}