Zealots of the Middle

At first glance, they seem an unlikely combination. Slim, suave, well-tailored Rowland Evans, 45, is the very model of a cosmopolitan correspondent. Swarthy, slangy, excitable Robert Novak, 35, often acts like a Chicago police reporter. Yet professionally, the two men complement each other perfectly; they have merged their talents in a joint political column, "Inside Report," that has a faster-growing readership than any of its competitors. Begun in 1963 with only 35 clients, "Inside Report" is now carried by 135 newspapers.

In an era when the press is surfeited with armchair experts, the column's striking success can be traced to its emphasis on reporting rather than punditry. "Fresh fact is our thrust," says Evans. And often enough, the two men have uncovered facts that no one else put in print. They were the first to disclose that a member of California's John Birch Society had joined the prestigious "President's Club" and that he and his family had contributed $12,000 to the Democratic Party. After the column appeared, Democratic leaders in California forced the national committee to return the money. Earlier, the team reported an attempt by the John Birch Society to take over the Republican executive committee in Houston; the plot was foiled.

Low Commitment. The columnists are equally skillful at exposing far-out leftists. They have devoted column after column to the black-power machinations of S.N.C.C., and they convincingly defended Sargent Shriver in his effort to take the Mississippi poverty program out of S.N.C.C.'s hands. "We have a very, very low ideological commitment," says Evans, who takes pride in the fact that the column cannot be identified with any political party or doctrine. "We are resolutely middle of the road," says Novak.

By underplaying ideology, Evans and Novak are free to concentrate on the mechanics of practical politics. In the recent election campaign, they contrasted Richard Nixon's shrewd construction of a cross-country network of political allies with George Romney's failure to build a national organization for a presidential drive. Bobby Kennedy's major weakness, the pair pointed out, is not that he is too much of a boss in New York but that he is too little of a leader. He throws his energy into winning "broad popular support," not into "brick-by-brick construction of organizational support." Last week, Evans was in Vietnam. After analyzing the effect of the Manila Conference on Saigon politics, he continued his search for facts by going into the field to observe the fighting. Novak remained in the U.S. to forecast a post-election struggle between Democratic liberals and conservatives over a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Preparing for the Worst. The prolific cooperation began three years ago when Evans, a veteran Washington reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, approached Novak, a congressional reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and talked him into giving the column a try. Evans, who was close to the New Frontier, and Novak, a Midwestern Republican, hit it off from the start. Their work habits differ--Evans usually meets a source over breakfast; Novak prefers to make his contacts at lunch--but they pool their information. They take turns writing the column, and they edit each other. "We use each other as a sounding board," says Evans, "and as a double check."

Along with their five-day-a-week column, the pair recently turned out a book, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (the New American Library; $7.95), a highly detailed account of the President's ceaseless political maneuvering. Upset at the exposure he gets, Johnson dismisses Evans as "that Stacomb boy," says he can tell when the unkempt Novak is around because he can "smell" him. Still, the Evans-Novak style of reporting does not always make L.B.J. look bad. Like almost all the rest of the press, they took the President to task for the offhand manner in which he announced the appointment of Nicholas deB. Katzenbach as Under Secretary of State. But unlike most of their colleagues, they went on to explain why Katzenbach was a wise choice, how much care and thought went into the selection.

"Inside Report" occasionally suffers from the fault of making too much out of too little. Evans and Novak were plainly alarmist when they rather breathlessly predicted a "spectacular mass killing" to be staged by the Viet Cong in Saigon before this fall's elections. Yet it is the nature of their column to prepare readers to expect the worst. "It's been said of us that we seldom have anything nice to say about anybody," says Evans. "This is basically true. We are interested in arrangements, deals, quid pro quos. We try to shed light on the subterranean transactions that underlie all politics."

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