In the days after the election of Donald Trump, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd "flinched" as she typed out the words "President Trump".

"It's still impossible to wrap your mind around the fact that the flashy, blingy, boasting, belittling, mendacious, megalomaniacal, shambles huckster once known in New York as the 'short fingered vulgarian' is now the 45th president of the United States," Dowd went on to write in her book about the 2016 presidential race, The Year of Voting Dangerously.

But now two years later Dowd, who is in Australia for the Antidote festival of ideas, claims to be "less pessimistic than most Americans" about Mr Trump's ascendancy.

Up until last week, when Mr Trump's former lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges including violating campaign finance laws and tax fraud, he could well have been re-elected, she said.

"I feel that Donald Trump has actually been a revivifying force," Dowd told an audience at Melbourne's NGV on Sunday evening.

"He has instilled a lot of energy into a lot of [institutions and movements] that had been moribund: feminism, liberalism, Sunday chat shows, Stephen Colbert ... journalism."

Thanks to Mr Trump, she said, a growing number of women were now entering state houses and congress. "He's also put several women [authors] on the bestseller list ... not to mention he's revived bars and shrinks."

'Selfie president' refers to White House as 'the set'

In Australia to discuss the recent turbulence in American politics and the significance of the #MeToo movement and where it might lead, Dowd — who has covered seven presidential election campaigns — reflected on how "shocked" she was that a "selfie president" and former reality TV show host who regularly refers to the White House as "the set" could have clinched the nomination.

In his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower, she said, "There were more pictures of Donald Trump than campaign workers".

"When he first thought about running for president in 1999, I went ... to Miami on his plane, which was full of fake French impressionist [paintings] and junk food and a double bed.

"I said to him, 'What on earth makes you think you could be president?' And he looked at me ... and said, 'I get the best ratings on Larry King ... and [his then girlfriend] Melania has been on a lot of magazine covers, and a lot of men hit on her ... and my name is on the General Motors building five times."

That, Dowd said, was the beginning of what she dubbed "ego arithmetic" — a performance many are now familiar with.

"The very first thing Trump did the day he became President was to start obsessing over the number of people who'd been at his inauguration, trying desperately to prove that it was more than [the number who attended] Obamas. He now has pictures of the crowd looking big all over the White House."

What Donald Trump tweets and what he feels 'are two different things', says Maureen Dowd. ( Reuters: Leah Millis )

'What he tweets and what he feels two different things'

Still, she says, The Donald is far more complicated than he might seem. Take, for example, his frequent public mocking of the press, especially The New York Times.

"Despite the fact he derides us as the 'failing' New York Times", Dowd said, "he's obsessed with us ... He called in our publisher and editorial page editor recently and ... they didn't know what the purpose of the meeting was, [but it turned out it] was just to woo them, to try and [build] a great relationship with us."

Sometimes, she added, "What he tweets and what he feels are two different things".

It's hard to tell if men are 'really changing' as a result of #MeToo, or if they're just 'waiting until there's less pressure on them', said Maureen Dowd. ( Supplied: Ben Swinnerton )

Given the President's "self-destructive" hubris, erratic and potentially "dangerous" use of Twitter, and the troubling legal questions continuing to swirl around him, the Democrats could have easily mounted a strong campaign by now, Dowd said — had they invested in and nurtured the right candidates.

"The Democrats could breeze in if they had anyone, but they're focused less on getting appealing candidates and more on explaining how awful Trump is, which people already know," she said.

"Nobody knows the names of [any potential Democrat candidates] because the party hasn't brought anyone along ... septuagenarians and octogenarians basically have an iron grip on the party."

Dowd is also well-known for her sharp and critical views, particularly of Hillary Clinton, whom she describes as "paranoid".

On Sunday evening she recalled how, at a 2017 New Year's Eve black tie event in New York, she had been seated with her back to the Clintons. But a security detail approached her, she said, and asked her to move around the table so she was facing them directly.

And during Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, she said, he called her in for a private meeting during a flight from Paris to Berlin. "I thought ... he's going to give me a big scoop and we're going to have this great columnist-president relationship," Dowd said.

Instead, he told her she was "really irritating" (he was apparently annoyed by her portrayal of him as a health-obsessed "prig").

"One thing Barack Obama is very concerned with is coming across as cool," she said.

#MeToo: 'I referred to Hollywood as Saudi Arabia'

As well as having spent years covering presidential politics, Dowd has also covered feminism and gender politics, most recently reporting on actress Uma Thurman's allegations of harassment and abuse against Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino.

"I've learned that when I've spoken in anger I usually regret the way I express myself," Thurman had said in October 2017, as the #MeToo movement was gathering steam.

"So I've been waiting to feel less angry. And when I'm ready, I'll say what I have to say."

What she had to say was that Weinstein, who has been accused of harassment and assault by multiple women in Hollywood, had allegedly tried to sexually assault her in a London hotel room in the mid-90s, among other disturbing experiences.

Thurman also accused Tarantino, a director, of pressuring her into doing her own stunt driving — despite her protestations she felt unsafe — for a famous scene in the movie Kill Bill. (She ended up crashing the car, which she described to Dowd as a "deathbox", and was hospitalised.)

But even before stories of Weinstein's "monstrous behaviour" began emerging last year, Dowd said she had reported on the dismal representation of women in film and been deeply troubled.

"Already you're talking about a situation that was very powerless for women [in Hollywood] ... they were incredibly vulnerable in a setting that was very misogynistic."

So until the statistics shifted in women's favour, she said, nothing would really change.

"It's hard to tell if men are really changing [as a result of #MeToo] or if they're just kind of waiting until there's less pressure on them," she said.

"Before this ever happened I referred to Hollywood as Saudi Arabia because I think that when you don't use the minds and brains and hearts of women in a society, that society gets sick. You saw it in Saudi Arabia, you saw it in the Catholic Church, and you saw it in Hollywood."

Maureen Dowd will be in conversation with the ABC's Julia Baird at the Antidote festival in Sydney this weekend.