Rowland Evans; CNN Host, Political Commentator

Rowland Evans, the conservative political columnist and CNN host who was teamed for many years with Robert Novak, died Friday of cancer at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was 79.

Evans, a Marine who served in the Solomon Islands during World War II after leaving Yale, worked for Associated Press for 10 years, and was a reporter for the old New York Herald Tribune and Philadelphia Bulletin before becoming a partner with Novak in 1963.

He and Novak wrote a column, “Inside Report,” long syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times, that had as many as 300 clients. And in 1980, Evans joined CNN as co-host with Novak for the discussion program “Evans & Novak.”

Evans retired from writing the column regularly in 1993, but continued to appear on CNN. In 1998, Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal and columnist Mark Shields joined with the writing duo on CNN to form the TV show “Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields.”

Although Evans and Novak both voted for Democrat John F. Kennedy for president in 1960, and Lyndon B. Johnson for president in 1964, they soon turned to conservatism. They were big boosters of Republican Ronald Reagan for president, and much later made their great dislike for Democrat Bill Clinton clear in countless presentations.

In a Playboy magazine interview last year, Evans said of Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “He has seriously diminished the presidency. When you get the kind of action that he got in the Oval Office--or right next to it--and you are talking to congressmen while you’re getting your thrills, it cheapens the presidency.”

On the other hand, he acknowledged in the same interview: “Clinton is the best communicator I have ever seen. Better than Kennedy, and I thought Kennedy was better than Reagan.”

Of Reagan, he said: His “mind was not a highly calibrated instrument, but it worked in certain situations. The few big ideas he had were huge ideas. Getting rid of the Berlin Wall was not a small matter.”

Characterizing the two men Friday, Times political writer Mark Barabak observed: “Evans was a conservative, very conservative, but not a screamer the way Novak is. He was the more thoughtful of the two, but he was no less hard right than Novak, perhaps more so.”

Often patrician in manner, Evans seldom socialized with Novak, and columnist Jack Germond once said: “If they hadn’t been partners, Rowly never would have had Bob Novak in his house.”

Political consultant Frank Mankiewicz said that “Rowly is your Perrier-and-lime friend. Bob is your shot-and-a-beer friend.”

But regardless of their differences, both were hard workers.

Beside their columns and CNN show, they wrote two bimonthly newsletters (the Evans & Novak Political Report and the Evans & Novak Tax Report) and wrote numerous magazine articles and several books, including “Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power” (1966), “Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power” (1971) and “The Reagan Revolution” (1981).

Evans is survived by his wife, the former Katherine Winton; a son, Rowland Winton; and a daughter, Sarah Warren.