maureen's back from vacay!

Maureen Dowd is back from summer vacation with an Op-Ed in today's NYT called "The 46-Year-Old Virgin." She should get out of town more often - it's one of her better pieces in months.

Highlights include:

Obama doesn’t understand that his new approach — obliquely attacking Hillary by dismissing “those who tout their experience working the system in Washington” — cedes ground to her by admitting she has more experience working the system.

He allows Hillary to present herself as having the experience to be president just because she was married to one. He should be making the opposite case, that Hillary — go ahead, use her name, she won’t bite you, or even if she does, you’ll get over it — knew from nothing about the system.

In the White House, she botched health care and bungled dealing with special prosecutors — remember that talent she had for losing critical files? And in the Senate, she played it safe and became a Democratic Senator Pothole while helping W. launch his disaster in Iraq.

...

By conjuring a scenario where Hillary is the deft insider and he’s the dewy outsider, Obama only plays into her playbook again.