Rotating is probably best. If I had to write 700 word columns once or twice a week ad infinitum, I would probably also throw out my fair share of awful columns. (Hey, this is why I like blogging on my free time, no obligation to write when I don't feel particularly inspired!)

Maybe have a pool of people including Richard Haas, Fred Kaplan, Tom Ricks, you, Marc Lynch, Andrew Exum, and Spencer Ackerman? (Ok, that last one would never happen. Ackerman belongs at Wired, I don't think he's really what NYT is looking for, mores the pity.) I figure these are the people I most enjoy reading on blogs, so one column every month or two would be nice, as well.

Maybe Al Gore or Bill Clinton. They are like Friedman in that they are passionate about similar topics (energy, education and foreign affairs) and are committed to reform and progress.

and oh there is a spelling mistake: Question to readers: if not Tom Friedman, who would you want to read on world politics on the New York Times op-ed pasge?

I do believe you mean page, not pasge.

Fareed Zakaria, Umesh Patil, Daniel Drezner, Doug Kass, Megan McArdle; any one of them can be better than Tom Friedman.

Ok, I am exaggerating few names here; but you get the idea.

Then read the last line.

Nth-ing Ricks, Zakaria, and Drezner.

Robert Wright would also be a good choice. He's certainly spent a lot of time thinking about foreign policy, and while his work and previous Times op-eds tend to be fairly narrow, a regular column may force him to open up a bit and consider issues beyond his hobby-horses.

A Wright selection would also hasten Bloggingheads control of all media, which of course we all wait for with bated breath.

... I do appreciate the point that writing that often with that few words is a perilous exercise. Although, I'd like to think one of the most prominent newspapers in the world could do better than, "Not as bad as hack Globe sports correspondent."
To me columns like these should be a sober reminder of reality when one fad after another overtake the public consciousness, and Friedman tends to band-wagon jump. "The World's Flat!...no wait it's..."
Case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOF6ZeUvgXs

I am sorry Dan, but I want to rip the hair off Tom Friedman's upper lip for his never-ending wishy-washy, 'the world is flat' pablum every time he writes a column.

And I don't even read him anymore! I despise him *as an idea* by now. He's more predictable and boring than the Sunday Times magazine recipes for mango chutney or overwrought musings on things maybe only interesting to rich housewives in Westchester. He's the foreign policy equivalent of a Oxygen-Network made-for-TV-movie. No... not even that interesting...

One of my favorite Friedman-haters, Matt Welch, editor of the libertarianoid Reason magazine, has nailed him to the wall dozens of times; Some Greatest Hits=

http://reason.com/archives/2005/08/01/capturing-tom-friedman

"" The man has fashioned a career out of locating or inventing a crude symbolic shorthand to explain and even popularize complex international phenomena while relying on a small cast of elites from politics, academia, and business to agree with his global clich?s. But what started out as a clever decoding device has, in Friedman's 10th year on the country's most coveted op-ed real estate, become the crutch of a self-caricaturing hack.""

""Thomas L. Friedman, the human one-sentence-explanation dispenser""

....

Or a more recent 'pwning' (as the kids say):

http://reason.com/blog/2010/11/28/thomas-l-friedman-nation-build

""That's 14 New York Times columns and 34 deployments of the phrase "nation-building," for those keeping track.""

Please read that one. It's brutal.

Ok, you don't think his Tourettes-like cliche-habit is all that bad? How about just plain old *blindingly stupid arguments*??

e.g.

""One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages."""

Yes. I've personally also always wanted to commit my critics to insane asylums and/or work camps.

Or wait = Friedman explains we can solve unemployment AND wars with *fuel taxes!*

http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/07/if-its-sunday-its-moronic-stat

""[David Gregory:] ...this week the war on Afghanistan, the war on unemployment came together. Well, ultimately, what's more consequential for the this presidency?

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I'll tell you how you bring them together into one policy, David.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

MR. FRIEDMAN: It's called a gasoline tax of a dollar a gallon, OK? That you raise the money that we need to pay down the deficit, to pay for health care, and at the same time take away the very funding that's going to these people indirectly to draw a bull's-eye on our back. And the fact that our politics can't allow us to do the very thing we know is critical and important, shame on us.""

How about the impending doom of... twitter? Channeled through the Mustache of Wisdom while on a trip to a *rain forest*. If you don't get the connection...

Friedman circa July 206:

""The best part of this job is being able to step outside of your routine and occasionally look at the world through a completely different lens. The Peruvian Amazon rainforest is such a lens, and looking at the world through this dense jungle has given me new perspective on two issues -- Middle East violence and the spread of the internet.....

....All we do now is interrupt each other or ourselves with instant messages, e-mail, spam, and cell phone rings. Who can think or write or innovate under such conditions? One wonders whether the Age of Interruption will lead to the decline of civilization...""

No, really, there was a logical connection there. You just have to *try harder* to grasp his Super Big-Pictureness. For The Friedman understands all...

Or - my favorite - how about Friedman's "finger on the pulse", never-ending prescience on the "just-about-to-get-better" situation in Iraq?...

http://radgeek.com/gt/2006/05/19/gradualism_in/

""The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.""
—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 30, 2003)

What I absolutely don’t understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it’s over. I don’t get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what’s the rush? Can we let this play out, please?
—Thomas L. Friedman, Fresh Air, NPR (June 3, 2004)

What we’re gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation, CBS (October 3, 2004)

Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won’t be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.
—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 28, 2004)

I think we’re in the end game now…. I think we’re in a six-month window here where it’s going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that’s my own feeling—let alone the presidential one.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Press (September 25, 2005)

We’ve teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it’s going to come together.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation (December 18, 2005)

I think that we’re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool’s errand.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Oprah Winfrey Show (January 23, 2006)

I think we’re in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We’ve got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they’re going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they’re not, in which case I think the bottom’s going to fall out.
—Thomas L. Friedman, CBS (January 31, 2006)

I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Today, NBC (March 2, 2006)

Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.
—Thomas L. Friedman, Hardball, MSNBC (May 11, 2006)""

You at least have to give him credit for consistency.

Matt Taibbi also shares in 5-minute-Friedman-Hate:

""Friedman's take on Bush's Iraq policy? "It's OK to throw out your steering wheel," he wrote, "as long as you remember you’re driving without one."""....""Or how about Friedman's analysis of America's foreign policy outlook last May?: "The first rule of holes is when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels.

First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about?"""

Ok, so what have we established?

- He's a shitty writer who relies on fuzzy, meaningless cliches and catchphrases to avoid actually dealing with complex issues

- Not only that: he's too lazy to even come up *with new boring catchphrases* = he will drag them out for years, ad nauseam

- He thinks Democracy is like, so unhelpful, compared to Authoritarian Enlightenment...

- He apparently thinks Afghans are oil barons and that implementing brutal regressive taxation is a path toward greater US employment

- He never, ever, ever, ever, ever knew what the hell was really going on in Iraq.

And this but scratches the surface of Pile of Dumb.

Now, Dan, you were saying something about how sometimes Tom & The Stache *really gets it right*....

I beg you to back that up, please. For, I notice in your piece, you don't seem to bother with any relevant examples...? Strange....

"" if not Tom Friedman, who would you want to read on world politics on the New York Times op-ed page?""

If not already clear...

Just. About. Anyone.

Seriously, let's let the cracked-out homeless guy on my corner take over for a few months. *the world will be no worse off*.

Does Samuel Huntington have any illegitimate children? Yakov Smirnov? How about Lal Qila? (if you don't know the last one, Dan, search FP and drink from the font of wisdom)

Actually, I wouldn't mind The War Nerd for a guest columnist-spell. At least he's funny. e.g.

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-irans-cedar-show-aka-dont-get-excited-the-protestors-are-just-letting-off-some-steam/

His take on India-Pakistan relations was priceless:

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-called-it-indians-and-pakis-too-faggy-for-war/

I dare you to try and quote anything by Friedman that actually produced an LOL

When he suggests the U.S. lift the Gaza blockade by force or threaten to make public the transcripts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he sort of reminds me of Shaughnessy...

Alex Pareene writes a yearly list of hacks? That's some serious lack of self-awareness.

Tom Friedman wrote a truly great book back in the day, which makes up for an awful lot of goofiness, though it can be hard to take the long view sometimes.

You and Megan McCardle are probably my two favorites reads; Rothkopf is close behind when he doesn't get all lefty or Clinton crazy or write about how great Brazil is. I like the guys at Reason, too. And I can't stand, can't stand, cannot stand Friedman. And no, he isn't wrong in an interesting way. He's just plain wrong. And annoying.

I would like to see more Gwynne Dyer.

uh ....

His writing I mean. I don't actually have to see Mr. Dyer, himself.