Dowd v. Gillibrand

No one in America goes postal on women politicians like Maureen Dowd.

Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice - they've all felt the lash of Dowd's whip.

Over the weekend, the NY Times columnist dipped her pen in curare and tried to write an epitaph for New York's new Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, dubbing her an "NRA handmaiden" and "a pain."

Gillibrand is, gasp, "opportunistic and sharp elbowed."

And yet Dowd also suggests that Sen. Chuck Schumer pushed Gillibrand as a candidate primarily because she would be satisfied in the second-fiddle position.

Caroline Kennedy -- the "best choice" for the Senate, whom Governor David Paterson "strangled" -- would have eclipsed Schumer with her Camelotian star-power.

Dowd's column is so full of faux-Algonquinian quips and barbs that it's hard to sort out any real argument against Gillibrand.

She points out that the Congresswoman from the 20th Congregssional district voted against President Bush's now-discredited stimulus package -- failing to note that it was a prescient and popular decision.

Dowd suggests that Gillibrand is a pawn of sorts in some Olympian rivalry between the Clintons and the Kennedys.

The whole thing is so depressingly junior-high that it's hard to engage, but here are a couple of points.

The notion that Caroline Kennedy was ever a viable option has become impossible to sustain.

Kennedy simply couldn't make any case for herself. Period. Full stop. She loafed around and sort of shrugged and quibbled and then withdrew.

That's the kind of behavior that would have eclipsed Chuck Schumer? Does Maureen Dowd remember that Sen. Schumer is the man who just engineered a nearly filibuster-proof majority in the Senate?

What Schumer wants, patently, is someone who can hold this Senate seat in 2010 and again in 2012. He, like Paterson, is clearly convinced that Gillibrand has a great shot at it.

Anyone who's seen her campaign has to agree.

Dowd's suggestion that Gillibrand is somehow dangerously or inappropriately ambitious is -- not to put to fine a point on it -- luridly sexist.

I've watched Gillibrand from the day she declared for Congress. She is hugely aggressive, to be sure. Hugely sharp-elbowed.

But never once has she given any evidence that her competence and intelligence and commitment to public service aren't the full equal of her ambition.

That's not to say that Kirsten Gillibrand is the best person for the job.

If someone else can make the case in 2010 that they have better ideas, better policies and a greater capacity for leadership, then Gillibrand will lose.

Until then, I expect Senator Gillibrand to be a formidable and productive member of New York's delegation.