From the Novak diaries--Part 2

Mud-wrestle over peace talk sabotage? Rocky, Reagan alter history by what they did not do

By Wes Vernon

(See Part 1: The Plame affair)

Syndicated columnist and TV commentator Robert D. Novak took a journey from a "middle of the road" flirtation with liberalism to the conservative side. Others — notably Ronald Reagan — have taken a similar journey. But Novak and his late partner Rowland Evans moved their famous Evans and Novak column along with them on their ideological metamorphosis — sometimes to the puzzlement of client newspapers whose new generation editors were actually steering left.

Three influences were at work, Novak tells this writer: His mindset as a Cold Warrior (anti-Communism); the late Jude Wanniski's The Way the World Works (economics); and his wife Geraldine (anti-abortion).

So when Bob Novak sits down to write memoirs of his 50 years here in Washington (The Prince of Darkness), any reader familiar with his style and decades-long unquenchable thirst for exclusive information should not be surprised to find interesting but long-forgotten or newly revealed nuggets in the political whirl, or new questions about unsolved puzzles.

Political/diplomatic wiretaps

On Thursday October 31, 1968 — just five days before the presidential election between Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace — President Lyndon Johnson called a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and announced "prompt, serious, and intensive negotiations" in Paris. Not long afterward, South Vietnamese (i.e., the "good guys") President Nguyen Van Thieu said his government would not attend the talks.

Anna Chan Chennault — a Chinese beauty, naturalized American, widow of World War II hero Claire Channault — had ties to the Thieu regime in South Vietnam. She was caught on an FBI wiretap pleading for Saigon to boycott the talks.

There was ample public speculation at the time that such a conversation had taken place. But no one nailed it in public. However, Novak says in his book, "There is no question that she was manipulated by John Mitchell and Spiro Agnew. Nixon had deniability, but I hardly think it conceivable that Mitchell and Agnew would have acted without Nixon's knowledge"

As a panelist on Meet the Press just before the election, Novak had a golden opportunity to raise the Chennault/Thieu question with Nixon.

"I was sure in my mind that I would ask him about Anna Chennault. And I didn't," he told me.

Why not? I asked.

The Washington veteran's response: "I'm trying to think out why, because it was just a rumor. I didn't know it was true. A lot of stuff came out subsequently that indicated it was more than a rumor — that it was true. I didn't know that Johnson had tapped her conversations. The whole thing is very interesting. Why they didn't release what she was saying? ... I don't think Johnson wanted people to know that he was illegally taping the conversation."

So this then was a mud-wrestle between two smashmouth politicians. If Nixon — as Novak suspects — "got away with the most successful dirty trick of his career," one can also look at LBJ's illegal use of the FBI to plant a wiretap on the phone of a private citizen who was not a spy or a terrorist. That is the reason, in Novak's opinion, as to why Johnson did not publicize his damning findings at the time. Also one can arguably say LBJ prostituted diplomatic channels to create — five days before an election — another "October Surprise" — all for Humphrey's benefit — with a phony "peace conference" in a war that was destined to drag on for another five years.

Earlier, "peace talks" during the Korean War had degenerated into an argument over the shape of the negotiating table until (as was much later learned) President Eisenhower warned the commies — in diplomatic but easily understood language — that either they back off or they risked being nuked.

Kissinger wiretap?

Another secretly recorded phone conversation uncovered by Novak for his memoirs didn't come to his attention until 33 years after the fact. In his research for the book in the summer of 2006, the "prince of darkness" — as Novak was known — discovered a surreptitiously recorded call that Nixon's then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger made to Rowland Evans. An April 1973 Evans and Novak column spotlighted White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman's effort to blackball Kissinger. The column (written by Evans, who nonetheless placed the blame on Novak) caused Dr. Kissinger some angst out of concern for his relations with Haldeman.

"Why don't you check your columns with me," Kissinger demanded. Though Evans himself had written the column while Novak was overseas, he told Kissinger Novak had done the most work on it.

Novak discovered the "White House tape" just last year from archived material. The recording was not on Evans' end of the line. It was on Kissinger's — calling from California.

Reagan and history — What if?

As Bob Novak sees it, Ronald Reagan's last-minute announcement of a 1968 run for the White House at the Republican National Convention could have been a beneficial turning point for America. Alas, the columnist laments, it turned the wrong way. Reagan's drive was derailed by Senator Strom Thurmond, who pulled Nixon's chestnuts out of the fire. In his new book, Novak writes, "Save for Thurmond, I believe Reagan would have been nominated and would have been elected, by a bigger margin than Nixon," and that would have been good.

"How so?" this writer asked Novak in our June 25 interview in his office. There would have been no Watergate, no hapless Ford administration, and no Carter administration with its double digit "misery index."

On the other hand, was Reagan really ready for the job twelve years ahead of his ultimate successful run for president? He was just getting his feet wet as Governor of California. Nobody had heard of "supply-side economics" or its "Laffer curve." And how would Reagan have managed to get us out of Vietnam?

Novak: "I thought he was a practical enough man that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam a lot faster than Nixon did. I do also believe that on the question of realignment [where conservative Democrats were flocking to the more ideologically hospitable Republican party, leaving the Democrats to the hard-nosed liberals], I believe that there is a very good chance that the Southern states that went for [George] Wallace would have gone for Reagan. In fact, I'm not even sure that Wallace would have had a candidacy."

And as for Reagan's then-unknown supply-side tax-cutting policies?

Novak: "I know that in his gut, he always knew the futility of high tax rates, because when he suddenly became a movie star at a very young age, and got himself into the 90 percent tax bracket, he stopped making movies for the year [on the grounds of why should he work for 6 cents on the dollar?]. He knew exactly what the ill effects of high taxes were. How that would have related, I don't know, because the odd part of it was that in the early sixties, cutting taxes was considered liberal. And conservatives said you can't cut taxes unless you have a balanced budget."

Rockefeller and history — What if?

Nelson Rockefeller tried twice for the presidency — in 1960 and again in 1964. A "moderate" — arguably code language for "liberal" Republican — Rocky left Novak cold in their interviews. The New York governor made it plain that the Goldwater candidacy of 1964 presented him with a mission to save the Republican Party and the country.

In The Prince of Darkness, Novak — who liked Goldwater personally and as a news source, but thought his quest for the nomination was disorganized — records his recollection of Rockefeller: "I was turned off by the implicit claims of entitlement from one of the richest men in the world. I believe he wanted to sound tough, but it came across to me more like whining."

As for the 1960 nomination, the New York governor's bid was doomed for a very simple reason. The Republican convention delegates of that year didn't want him.

Robert Novak writes that if Rockefeller had been nominated in 1960, he would have defeated John F. Kennedy, and that would have been bad.

He believes Rocky "would have carried New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, all states that Nixon lost. Rockefeller's administration would have been hardly less liberal than Kennedy's." The famous oil fortune heir probably would not "have wandered into Vietnam without a plan for winning" and would not "have been buffaloed by Khrushchev." However, "Rockefeller as president would have forced a long postponement of the desirable realignment into conservative Republican and liberal Democratic parties. This might have eliminated the Goldwater candidacy and the Reagan presidency. Big government would have gotten even bigger without the mitigation of Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts."

As for '06....

Looking over a half-century span of up-front and backroom politics, it is Robert D. Novak's belief that the seeds for the ultimate Republican disaster in 2006 were planted as early as 1995 when the newly minted "Gingrich Congress" retained half the Democrat staffers on the House Appropriations Committee. At the time, the congressional Republicans argued that — well, y' know, we need some people "who know where the bodies are buried," so to speak. Novak doesn't buy it. That failure of a clean sweep of staffers on that key panel ultimately helped lead to the "earmarks" and "bridges to nowhere" reckless spending that played a role in the defeat the GOP in 2006.

"This isn't brain surgery," he said. "I guarantee you the Republican staffers coming in there felt there were plenty of [conservative] people who could do these jobs."

Newt Gingrich — an intellectually brilliant history professor and highly competent political strategist — failed the leadership test as Speaker, Novak believes. The author thinks Gingrich sees 2008 as a Democratic year, and is waiting until 2012 to run for president.

Regarding the slowly evolving realignment, Novak is uncertain whether it has been stopped or has just hit a bump in the road. The potential Democrat in the White House most liable to generate a conservative backlash that would revive the realignment, in the veteran scribe's opinion, is John Edwards. His class hatred rhetoric would not sell a prosperous America. Next: Part 3 — Hillary Care that might have killed

© Wes Vernon