"Always love your country, but never trust your government." -- Robert Novak
The world lost one of the good guys today with the passing of Robert Novak.
Here is the Fox News report:
I use to look forward reading each edition of the Evans and Novak report.
Earlier this year Townhall Magazine ran special feature on Robert Novak entitled, "The Prince of Darkness as a Beacon of Dissent."
In that article, Novak is described as a reporter on the opinion page:
While Novak’s fame primarily resulted from his on-screen work, his real vocation was the written word. And although his work was found exclusively on the opinion pages for the last 45 years of his career, he was a political reporter more than anything else. Sure, he has always had his opinions—and over his life, he has become progressively more pro-life, more pro-market and more anti-interventionist— but so do all reporters. Novak was different from the news-page reporters because he didn’t hide his opinions.
But the commentary in his columns was usually secondary. His aim in each column was to include at least one previously unreported fact. Sometimes it was a trivial tidbit. Sometimes it was a major scoop.
[. . .]
Making people talk, listening well, remembering everything and following up were Novak’s real skills.
How did he do it? For one thing, he left the tape recorder in the office and the notepad in his back pocket. This sets your interlocutor at ease, making the meeting feel less like an interview and more like a conversation. For another thing, he operated, at almost all times, on background.
In journalism, there’s “on the record” and “off the record.” If you’re talking “on the record,” you can be named and quoted. “Off the record” information cannot be reported at all, unless the reporter gets an on-the-record source. “On background” is the large grey spectrum in between.
[. . .]
Novak’s exhortation to “never trust your government” is not just a free-market rallying cry or a libertarian mantra. It’s also a pragmatic conclusion after years of witnessing in action the men and women who make our laws and regulations.
People who knew Novak in the 1960s—when he voted for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater, fearing Goldwater would move the Republican Party too far to the right—point out that he hasn’t always been as conservative as he is now. On the social issues, Novak’s late-life conversion to Catholicism helps explain his rightward shift. On economic issues and the size of government, his increasing conservatism is partly the result of his having a front-row seat at the sausage factories that are Capitol Hill and the executive branch.
There is much more, including a different perspective on the Plame affair. You should read the whole thing.
In December 2008, the American Spectator Foundation awarded Novak the Barbara Olson Award for Excellence & Independence in Journalism.
Robert Novak will be missed. May he rest in peace.
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