Heart of 'Darkness': Robert Novak

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IN NOVEMBER 1978, Robert Novak was in Beijing. Pro-democracy posters denouncing human rights abuses by the country's leaders were popping up on a "democracy wall" on Hsi Tan Street. Everyone agreed that Deng Xiaoping alone was responsible for this remarkable flowering of free expression in the dictatorship. Deng was technically only vice premier, and his ascension to power was so recent that the CIA, in briefing Novak before the trip, didn't mention him.

Possibly due to the efforts of Henry Kissinger, Novak was permitted a two-hour interview with Deng, the first such discussion between a Western reporter and a Chinese leader in seven years.

The night before the interview, Novak went to Hsi Tan Wall and engaged a few Chinese in conversation. Hundreds of people began to crowd around him and a young woman offered to act as interpreter.

"Their questions startled me," Novak writes in his new memoir, "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington." "'How do you criticize your leaders without being considered a traitor?' 'How do you change governments without a revolution?'"

When Novak revealed his planned meeting with Deng to the crowd, the people engaged in a prolonged cheer, demonstrating the leader's popularity — then chaos erupted as the audience passed Novak scraps of paper with questions for the vice premier.

That's just one of the many striking moments in Novak's autobiography. The book recounts Novak's evolution from a small-town sports reporter in 1948 to his current position as the ultimate Washington insider via jobs past and present with the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, "The McLaughlin Group," "The Capital Gang," "Crossfire" and his perch as a widely syndicated newspaper reporter/columnist.

"The Prince of Darkness" offers intimate portraits of every president and nearly every important national political figure from Kennedy on, as well as first-hand accounts of international events such as the Vietnam War and El Salvador's Contra insurgency. Novak has produced a stellar primer (or refresher) on the last 50 years of American politics.

Express caught up with Novak, now 76, and asked him about Jimmy Carter's alleged dishonesty, Dick Cheney's changes, boozing on the Senate floor and the Valerie Plame brouhaha.

The P.O.D. himself will further discuss his book on Wednesday at Politics and Prose.

» EXPRESS: I know that "The Prince of Darkness" is a nickname that was given to you, but why adopt it to this degree?
» NOVAK: Because everybody calls me that, and it has an ironic connotation in a theological sense. I'm not the Prince of Darkness [Satan]. Anybody who is a conservative in Washington — believes in limited government in all senses — is [considered] a "Prince of Darkness." So it has an ironic, paradoxical quality.

» EXPRESS: Your nickname refers to your pessimism. Are you as pessimistic now as you were in '57?
» NOVAK: Probably not [chuckles]. As I've gotten older, I've gotten more optimistic, because a lot of things could happen. You could have a president like [Ronald] Reagan. I didn't think the Republicans would ever be able to take over Congress. I didn't think there would be increased lip-service given to some of the ideals of limited government and individual freedom. Probably the low point was during the Watergate scandal, the collapse of Vietnam, the Democratic landslide and the low ebb of the Republican Party.

» EXPRESS: Your book mentions a few times Jimmy Carter lied to you and cites other examples of his dishonesty. Would you say he was the most inveterate liar you've encountered in politics?
» NOVAK: Absolutely, particularly at that high level. I don't think he knew what the truth was. I think he thought he was telling the truth, which is the worst kind of liar. He was so into deception that he didn't know what the truth was. My personal experiences with him were a microcosm of the man.

» EXPRESS: Do you appreciate the work he's done with Habitat for Humanity?
» NOVAK: Not much. It's nice that he feels good about that. It's work that a retired local haberdasher could do. I don't think it's the kind of work for a president. He's been as bad an ex-president as he was a president.

» EXPRESS: Do you think you're part of the establishment?
» NOVAK: I think I'm a little notorious and outrageous; a little too much so to be part of the establishment. I've never served in the government or in politics; I've never even been asked. You can hardly call me a part of the establishment.

» EXPRESS: Your book often discusses the Democratic and Republican parties' realignment and evolution over the past 50 years. What did the parties stand for in 1957?
» NOVAK: They didn't stand for much. The parties were much more diverse.

» EXPRESS: You must know that New Yorker story with the Brent Scowcroft quote, "... Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." Have you seen Cheney change?
» NOVAK: Yeah, I think he has changed. Two things happened to him: He became a multi-millionaire and he became a CEO. I'm not sure that those are the best adjectives for a government official. I think it's very hard for a former CEO to adjust himself to a life in government and I believe people who become very rich — I don't mean just a little rich — become quite different than they were when they were just one of the ordinary people. I think he's played a very constructive role in this administration in economic policy, beginning with tax policy. I approve of him on the environment. I don't agree with him on the war in Iraq, but he's certainly not a villain.

» EXPRESS: What's your stance on global warming?
» NOVAK: I think the global warming is not very alarming and it's certainly not caused by what industry does. I think this is all an enormous hoax to try to get policies the wacko environmentalists have wanted for some time. I approve of this administration's stand, but it's a very uphill fight when you have all the news media and everybody going in the opposite direction.

» EXPRESS: Your book calls Daniel Patrick Moynihan one of the most talented politicians you ever met, but later you call him "a waste." Do you really mean that?
» NOVAK: Well, he had a great public career. He accomplished a lot more than most public figures do, both as a legislator and, removed from his duties as a Senator, the great Pennsylvania Avenue Project in Washington, which was government at its best. But he could have been a great president — and that was the waste. I raised two problems with Moynihan. I don't think he ever really figured out where he belonged in the system. He was a liberal Democrat at heart, but he liked the Republicans more and there were many Republican principles he approved of more. His bigger problem was he drank too much.

» EXPRESS: Were there other major public figures you saw that as a major problem for?
» NOVAK: ... There was an awful lot of drinking on the floor of the Senate. It was a problem for a lot of public figures in those days [the '50s, '60s and into the early '70s].

» EXPRESS: When you were rereading your old columns in preparation for this book, what were some of the things that struck you as the most remarkable?
» NOVAK: [Chuckles] You know, a lot of the columns seem awfully trivial now ... I thought how critical the column was of sitting presidents — [Richard] Nixon, [Gerald] Ford and Carter, particularly. But we were also critical of a president we liked, mostly: Reagan. I was proud of the columns: We were critics. That's what a journalist should be.

» EXPRESS: What does the Valerie Plame affair reveal?
» NOVAK: It reveals that a minor story can be exaggerated and done up all out of proportion.

» EXPRESS: University of Maryland basketball figures somewhat prominently in the book.
» NOVAK: Well, it's one of my great passions. It just started because of proximity. It's something I really am hooked on, spend a lot of time on, travel all over the country [to follow]. I love basketball. I always have.

» EXPRESS: How do you think the men's team looks for next year?
» NOVAK: It'll be a young team, a lot of question marks, but if you can't be an optimist about basketball before the season starts, you can never be optimistic.
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» Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photos by Alex Wong/Getty Images