The best column in the Herald today....

...wasn't written by a Herald staffer.

Channel 10's Michael Putney - who wrote for the Herald in the 70's and 80's - pens a column today that proves he's still got game.

Putney looks at the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that is Gov. Charlie Crist.

Putney told me by phone today that he decided to write the column after interviewing the governor last week. "It dawned on me that even though I've known Crist for 20 years, I really don't know him," said Putney.

One thing you can always count on when you read a Putney column is that he'll throw in a few of those 50-cent words that make you run for the dictionary. Today's word: éminence grise.

Some of my favorite lines:

"He's also eternally cheerful and almost depressingly optimistic."

"His glass is not just half-full; it's always two-thirds full..."

"Is Charlie the genuinely concerned Republican moderate/populist he professes to be (``I work for the people, they're my boss'')? Or is he a slightly ditzy, disconnected lightweight who has succeeded on the strength of great political instincts..."

"And yet I'm not sure I really know him. He is at once ubiquitous and hard to pin down, simultaneously transparent and opaque. He seems to be exactly what he appears to be, but then will disappear for a moment into an otherness that's hard to pierce."