eggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, is author of The Case Against Hillary Clinton.

Lopez: In Friday’s Wall Street Journal you say that Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy “isn’t going to work.” Does every hour he doesn’t announce he won’t run hurt his party?

Peggy Noonan: Well, time is of the essence, sure. The state convention is in two weeks, and it might be nice if Republicans knew who their candidate for the U.S. Senate was going to be at some point before that — though who knows, maybe the nominee will actually be chosen in a big floor fight. But beyond that, Mrs. Clinton is moving forward every day, inch by inch. Just the past few days she had a free and affectionate hour on Rosie O’Donnell, a free and respectful hour on The Today Show, and a love-in right afterwards on Joan Hamburg’s local radio show. Every appearance was a ten-strike, and each was carefully calibrated to appeal to women. Hillary is a woman who knows how to charm, and I see her charm moving her forward each day. She’s a tough little tank, Hillary Rommel Clinton. And my sense of the Republicans of New York, or rather the party leaders, is that they’re men who are not quite understanding what kind of progress Mrs. Clinton is making each day. They just run around saying things like, ‘We’re raising a lot of money.’ But money alone won’t decide this race. We’ve got to get in the game.

Lopez: How big a role does the Giuliani-Hanover marriage breakup play in destroying his candidacy? How much is it the cancer? How much are police issues? Was it going downhill before his life-altering problems were made public?

Noonan: Candidacies can reach a “tipping point,” in Malcolm Gladwell’s phrase. Rudy’s has reached a kind of negative critical mass. It’s not the woman or the woman or the wife or the cancer or the anger or the intemperate statements or the drama — it’s all these things together, one after another, boom, boom, boom. At some point a viable candidacy turns sick. That’s what’s happened here.

Lopez: Despite this, do you anticipate that there is much of a chance that Giuliani does run?

Noonan: I don’t think he’ll continue to run. I think he’ll get out. I have a hunch that the cancer story is playing a bigger part in his actions than we know, that there’s more going on there. That’s why his statement was so emotional — because this is a genuinely dramatic time for him. You also sense with Rudy that he has a soul, and it’s roiling, and he’s thinking very seriously about what he wants and what he needs, and what’s important and what’s crucial. The story with him right now just isn’t politics, I think.

Lopez: If he chooses to stay in, can this be race/relationship be spun as akin to Hillary/Bill — Rudy as the cheater and Hillary as the victim?

Noonan: You know, I don’t see the Rudy story as similar to Bill Clinton’s dramas. Clinton appears to be a compulsive sexual predator who gets in trouble and then slimes his victims — “stalker,” “liar.” Then evidence shows up on a dress and he says, “right-wing hate machine,” “hypocrites.” Clinton is at heart a destructive force, he divides and conquers, and if you told him that is destructive he’d only say, “They deserve it.” I think he’s a classic narcissist in terms of operating this way: I want what I want when I want it, and if you thwart me then you must be extinguished because I want what I want when I want it. I am persuaded by Chris Matthews’s observation that the big fact of Clinton is that he never had a father and no one ever taught him to be a man. When I think of him lately I think of Brideshead Revisited, Rex Mottram — “half a man.” Rudy is normal compared to Clinton. His world has been rocked, he’s sick from the thing that killed his father, and he’s in love with someone who isn’t his wife. His world has been rocked. He’s acting like his world has been rocked.

Lopez: You suggest N.Y. governor George Pataki as his replacement. He’s has said he won’t. Does that matter?

Noonan: I think George W. should call Pataki and lean on him, hard, to run. Pataki could stop Hillary, which would make him a national hero to exactly one half the nation. And Pataki, if he ran a good campaign — and there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t, being popular and well known — could conceivably get Bush’s numbers up in New York. He could, conceivably, make New York contestable on the national level, which it isn’t right now. So I hope W. calls him and leans, hard.

Lopez: You describe Pataki as the “perfect candidate,” but doesn’t he have some of the same problems that Giuliani has — namely, he’s another pro-choice (Catholic) Republican who Conservative party members won’t vote for?

Noonan: Point taken, but as Henry Hyde once said, politics is a game of addition. We live in New York, it’s a pro-choice state, if the Republican candidate against Hillary is pro-choice then we shouldn’t be surprised. My abortion problem with Rudy was that he was for partial-birth abortion, which even Pat Moynihan called what it is, infanticide.

Hillary, if she wins, will treat all pro-life groups and pro-lifers like dogs. She hates them — they stand for everything bad and backward to her. A Republican who’s pro-choice usually has the brains and sometimes the heart to treat pro-lifers and their groups with respect, and to listen to them at least to the extent of allowing them to be heard. And so I tend to see a difference. But really what we want, the best we can get in New York, I think, right now, is a person who will speak honestly and persuasively about abortion no matter what their position on legality. And we don’t have that.

Lopez: You’ve literally written the book on Hillary Rodham Clinton, any interest in running yourself?

Noonan: My son is twelve, and if I went into politics he and I wouldn’t be able to watch The Simpsons and The Nanny together every night. And we like to do that, and trying to be a good mother is important to me. Jackie Onassis told me once that if you get that right you got everything right, and if you get it wrong you got everything wrong, and I believe that. Clare Boothe Luce thought that by the end too. So: where I am is where I ought to be, and where I want to be.

Lopez: If not Pataki, how about Rep. Rick Lazio, Rep. Jack Quinn, Ted Forstmann? Or a Peter King — who is a pro-lifer who didn’t vote for impeachment? Who else makes a viable opponent for Hillary?

Noonan: Well, I don’t know. Lazio seems to have bobbled it a bit in the past. He’s young, but he looks like a solid guy. I don’t know anything about Quinn except he’s from Buffalo and voted for impeachment on all four counts, both of which are plusses in my book. And Russ Smith, New York Press‘s “Mugger,” thinks he’s good, and Russ is very smart. Ted Forstmann is a smart, tough guy, and he’s put his money where his mouth is in terms of the school liberation movement. I don’t know how he’d be on the stump, as a candidate. Peter King — I think Peter is a riot because he confuses all categories, and he’s deft and unpredictable, a maverick. He might be surprising.

Lopez: What do you make of the press coverage — of the cancer, of the marriage breakup — Thursday’s hostile press conference? Is there something discomforting about it? Or has the mayor brought it on himself in a way?

Noonan: The press hectored Rudy on Thursday in a way they never have and never will with Hillary. Can you imagine reporters surrounding Hillary and hitting her hard with shouted questions — “Do you think your husband is a rapist?” “Why would Juanita Broaddrick, a Democrat and a supporter of your husband at the time, make this claim if it weren’t true?” “Why did you say you didn’t know Craig Livingston when now we know there are pictures of the two of you standing together and laughing?” “Why did you take spousal privilege in the case of your husband’s illegal violations of the privacy act in the Willey case?” “Why did you say that you didn’t insist on the travel office firings when the notes of your own aides and assistants show you did?” “You hired private eyes in the past to find out about your husband’s dealings with women — why should we believe that you didn’t know what he was doing in the White House, and why should we believe you sincerely meant it when you spoke of a right wing conspiracy?” “Do you understand why some people view you and your husband as a destructive force in American history?” “You’ve never explained how you made a hundred grand on cattle futures overnight — why?” This kind of media swarm — shouted questions, interruptions, etc. — will never descend on Mrs. Clinton. But it is inevitable if you are a Republican. This is no less sad for the fact that we all know it, and have long known it, and know it will not end any time soon.