From the comments section:

Maureen Dowd is a rarity in Washington: a working columnist with first-hand historical knowledge of politics in the 1980s through today. It shows whether she's writing on today's top-flight cast of congressional players still active on the DC scene, or those now leaving us. 

Plus, I like her insight in nailing what Colin Powell really knew before he testified to Congress back on that winter day in early February in 2003, when the march to war in Iraq was definitely not inevitable, but his testimony helped tip things... 

 Babies born then are college freshmen now, for reference. Colin Powell's decision to testify, which Maureen Dowd wrote about then, is still reverberating in American politics.