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Feb 7 2008 5:00AM EST

MM Recommends: Gail Collins in the 'Times'

The New York Times's op-ed section has been catching a lot of flak of late over everything from the hiring of intellectually-threadbare neoconservative Bill Kristol to Maureen Dowd's dateline sleight-of-hand to Roger Cohen's general suckiness.

So I figured it was time to say something nice for a change. Fortunately, there's Gail Collins.

It's been a little over six months since Collins, a former editorial-page editor, took up the op-ed pen, but in that brief time she's already become the page's most consistently enjoyable voice. If the Times tends to have one indispensable columnist for each historical moment -- Paul Krugman during the '04 election, Thomas Friedman right after 9/11, etc. -- Collins is it right now.

Collins writes almost exclusively about politics, hardly an under-explored topic. But something in her cool, bemused tone seems perfectly calibrated to an election whose stakes feel oddly low. (Whoever we end up with in November, she implies, it's bound to be a big improvement over the guy we've got now.)

And she's funny! Take this example, from her list of Qualities We Don't Want in the Next President": "Let's just try to avoid another chief executive who can create utter chaos in the Middle East and still figure that it was a great week if he did 20 miles on his trail bike." Or consider her description of the flip-flopping Mitt Romney as "sort of like Spiderman 3, without the weepy subplots."

As another witty woman who writes about politics and is handy with a pop-culture reference, it's tempting to compare Collins to her page-mate Dowd. So let's compare. Unlike Dowd, who drips with contempt when she writes about George Bush, Dick Cheney or the Clintons, Collins is without rancor. Her writing is stylish but not elaborately mannered like Dowd's. Above all, Collins's observations are clear-eyed and precise, while Dowd all too often dabbles in overheated psychodrama (eg. W.'s Oedipal struggle, Prince Obambi versus Ice Queen Hillary) that feels both hackneyed and half-accurate.

But, then, why compare at all? Why shouldn't the Times have two funny females sharing a page? Eat your heart out, Hitch.

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