I Really Care if Novak Cares

Yesterday, I wept in my beer about poor Robert Novak's emotional outburst -- "This is bullshit" -- on live TV.

I said (and I quote) "My heart goes out" to Mr. Novak.

Well, today, I really, really, really care about dear Robert. His long and close personal relationship with Karl Rove is very emotional and important to me and, I assume, the nation.

Apparently, like my tears, Mr. Rove has been leaking for years (intentional rhyme: tears, years). The NYT reports that Karl Rove was fired from George H.W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign after suspicions arose that he had smeared the campaign's manager, Robert Mosbacher Jr., via a leak to poor Robert Novak.

The NYT offers some background on what was happening in Texas in 1992, when Daddy Bush was trying to gather support for his re-election:

In those years, Mr. Rove regularly had dinner with Mr. Novak when the columnist went to Austin. Mr. Rove, in his mid-30's, was a rising political operator who in 1981 founded his direct-mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Company. Gov. William P. Clements, a Republican, was one of his first clients.

Mr. Novak, in his mid-50's, was big political game for Mr. Rove. He was the other half, with Rowland Evans Jr., of a much read and increasingly conservative column that was syndicated by The Chicago Sun-Times and published weekly in The Washington Post. Evans and Novak, as it was called - Mr. Evans retired in 1993 -closely chronicled the Reagan era, and it would have been a sign of Mr. Rove's arrival on the national scene for Mr. Novak to mention him in print.

Still, a computer search of Mr. Novak's columns shows that Mr. Rove's name did not appear under his byline until 1992, when Mr. Novak wrote the words that got Mr. Rove into such trouble.

"A secret meeting of worried Republican power brokers in Dallas last Sunday reflected the reality that George Bush is in serious trouble in trying to carry his adopted state," the column began.

The column said that the campaign run by Mr. Mosbacher was a "bust" and that he had been stripped of his authority at the "secret meeting" by Senator Phil Gramm, the top Republican in the state.

Also at the meeting, Mr. Novak reported, was "political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher."

Specifically, Mr. Mosbacher told The Houston Chronicle in 2003 that he had given a competitor of Mr. Rove the bulk of a $1 million contract for direct mail work in the campaign.

"I thought another firm was better," Mr. Mosbacher told The Chronicle. "I had $1 million for direct mail. I gave Rove a contract for $250,000 and $750,000 to the other firm."

The other firm belonged to Mr. Rove's chief competitor, John Weaver, and Mr. Rove was so angry, Texas Republicans say, that he retaliated by leaking the information about Mr. Mosbacher to Mr. Novak.

I think it was a serious mistake for Bush Sr. to have fired Karl Rove after the Novak column claimed "George Bush is in serious trouble in trying to carry his adopted state." How did Bush Sr. know that Karl was the one who gave Mr. Novak that information? Karl is much better at covering his tracks than that.

So these two longtime friends, Karl Rove and Robert Novak, have been at this leak game for over ten years. As I say, my heart goes out to them. They work so hard at their jobs.

I do hope that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knows what he's doing. Mr. Novak's incredible reporting may turn up some information on Fitzgerald that tells it like it really is.

Watch your back, Mr. Fitzgerald.