Sex & the Single Stiletto

When Dowd made it to the Times in 1983, her novelist's eye for detail quickly dazzled the bosses.

Bill Kovach, then the Times Washington bureau chief, recalls Dowd telling him on the night that Walter Mondale was nominated for president that he seemed unsure whether to hug his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro -- which "saved our bacon" when Dowd turned it into a front-page story. "I always thought she wrote beautifully," he says.

But Kovach was "disturbed" as Dowd moved "more and more in the direction of column writing" while still a news reporter, sparking a journalism-review debate about whether the Times would spawn a legion of cheap Dowd imitators.

Dowd remembers the discussions differently, saying Kovach had told her she was "appealing to people's emotions rather than their intellect, which I found offensive."

Six months after launching her op-ed career in 1995, Dowd told Howell Raines, then the editorial page editor, she wanted out. She agreed to continue only when he threatened to send her back to the Metro staff, triggering "acid flashbacks" of her local reporting days. But the stress continued. She went to a nutritionist, even saw an acupuncturist.

The most persistent criticism of Dowd's columnizing is that she's mostly sizzle and little steak, a clever wordsmith, pop-culture queen and armchair psychologist who fails to take a stand on thorny issues. She would sidle up to John Kerry and ask whether he used Botox, but not dirty her hands by inquiring about his health care policy.

"People who criticize me say I should have focused more on policy or numbers," Dowd says. She insists she is not a liberal columnist, has no overarching ideology and chronicles the political wars as a Shakespearean drama. "In American history," she says, "all of our great traumas -- Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-contra, Iraq, Harriet Miers -- came from presidents' personal foibles. . . .

"W. is so insulated and infantilized by having sycophants around him that he's become completely blind and deaf to the fact that someone who sucks up to him is not necessarily qualified for the Supreme Court."

At heart, she views herself as a literary fish out of water. "Column writing is not my favorite genre," Dowd concedes. "I'm not a natural polemicist. Everything I love to do -- observations, quotes, letting people reveal themselves -- you just can't stuff into this tiny space."

Dowd caught fire in 1998, the year of sex, thongs and audiotape, as her mocking style seemed perfectly suited to the impeachment melodrama. Monica Lewinsky once confronted her at a restaurant and demanded to know why Dowd was writing such scathing articles about her. The columnist "wimped out" and said she didn't know.

After Bill Clinton had his dog neutered, he told the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that he saw the following column: "Buddy Got What He Deserved, by Maureen Dowd."

In those days, many Washington conversations began, "Did you read Maureen this morning?" Newsweek declared that "she peerlessly skewers the manners of the capital." But when Dowd won a Pulitzer in 1999, some detractors complained that she failed to take a strong stand on much of anything. Critic James Poniewozik offered a semi-defense in Salon, saying: "Why is it so important to us that Maureen Dowd believe in something, other than showing our leaders in a harsh light?"