Secret’s out. Maureen Dowd, just now, on MSNBC’s New York Times “Transition Edition:”

JOHN HARWOOD (MSNBC/New York Times): What will it be like for you as one of the best-known columnists in America to have to change your mindset from a president who you have been skewering pretty consistently for the last eight years to one that you feel pretty good about but still have to be a fair critic?

DOWD: Well, Sarah Palin told Greta Van Susteren last night that she has been praying about 2012 and I have been praying that Sarah Palin gets back here as quickly as possible.

HARWOOD: You are worried you might lose your edge with Obama?

DOWD: I just much prefer scandals about Neiman Marcus to uh, you know, weighty academics talking about the economy…..

Which reminded a colleague who was watching TV with me of the part in A Few Good Men when Col. Jessep finally cops to ordering the code red.

HARWOOD: Did you write The Maverick Wears Prada” screenplay-column, Maureen Dowd? Did you call Gov. Palin “Valentino Barbie?”

DOWD: You’re goddamned right I did!…. I did my job, I’d do it again!

At the end of the MSNBC segment, anchor Tamran Hall chimed in and said (referencing, I guess, Dowd’s repeated mentions during the segment of Bush and Obama’s shared dedication to gym workouts, as well as, perhaps, gym mentions in Dowd columns such as “Obama’s Project Runway”):

It seems you did well with making a scandal of the gym so I don’t think you will be short on material.

I share Hall’s confidence in Dowd’s “scandal-making” abilities.