Where is Pennsylvania going? We have one of the oldest populations in this country. People are leaving in droves. Our economic growth is near the bottom. And that’s not just the story of the big cities. Take a ride through Reading or Lancaster or Waynesboro. Lots of empty storefronts, not much vitality.

Eight years of Republican leadership failed to capitalize on one of this nation's greatest economic expansions.

If the answer is no, then Pennsylvania needs bold, dynamic leadership to turn things around. We need a can-do attitude. Someone who knows how to convince people that, when things are as bad as they are, you gotta believe.

In many ways, Pennsylvania is where Philadelphia was in 1992. That's when Rendell took over a moribund city on the verge of complete collapse and, through sheer force of will, broke through the prevailing loser mentality and engineered a turnaround that, by any standard, was remarkable.

Rendell took on the unions, winning concessions while maintaining jobs. He cut the business tax and the wage tax -- the nation's highest and a major impediment to job growth and economic stability. When it was necessary, he made the unpopular moves. Perhaps the most unpopular was pushing the liquor-by-the-drink tax, which bar owners and patrons hated but which has pumped about $23 million a year into public school coffers.

There is the matter of his temper. Manhandling reporters. A press office that actively impeded the free flow of information.

Far worse, there was a perceptible lack of real action beyond the confines of Center City. The task of dealing with neighborhood concerns, like plowing side streets and towing abandoned cars and developing a comprehensive plan to deal with abandoned buildings, was left to Rendell's successor, John Street.

And while many of the public schools' ills were beyond the scope of what a mayor can do -- particularly, enacting a far more equitable funding mechanism to better support any reforms -- Rendell's steadfast reliance on former superintendent David Hornbeck to get schoolchildren to achieve was a big mistake.

It's also one that further exposed a Rendell blind spot: the inability to fire ineffective managers, a problem perhaps most visible in his handling of former Police Commissioner Richard Neal. Neither Hornbeck nor Neal possessed the acumen or political savvy to handle their respective jobs. But Rendell, either out of blind loyalty or fear of ruffling feathers, had difficulty recognizing that and acting quickly.

Despite his failings, Rendell was absolutely right in his belief that growing the center was the best way to pull Philadelphia out of its pending bankruptcy. And any failings pale when you consider that not only did Rendell have the belief, but he had the will and the creativity to find solutions.

Given the state of the state, this is no time for timid, tepid leadership. Rendell's drink-tax gambit is a perfect example of his ability to find answers.

In terms of ideas, few things are more demonstrative of the difference between Rendell and his opponent, state Auditor General Robert Casey Jr., than their plans for funding education. It is the boldness and, yes, the audacity of Rendell's vision that offers the best chance to turn the vision into reality.

Casey wants to rely on increased state revenues during boom years, a move that would not fully kick in until 2011. Rendell, on the other hand, is calling for increasing the state's share of funding from 35 percent to 50 percent and paying for it via slots at racetracks, doubling the cigarette tax and efficiency-generated spending cuts, all of which would allow the state to pick up a greater portion of school funding right away. While we question just how many efficiencies are available and worry greatly about Rendell's fallback, increased state-income tax, we have no doubts that waiting until 2011 -- when next year's kindergarten students will be in the eighth grade -- is unacceptable.

Bob Casey Jr. is a fine man who has done a wonderful job of running the auditor general's office. He's ably served as the state's fiscal watchdog.

But he has never cut a tax, he has never stared down a union and had his car rocked by angry crowds, he has never done anything to create new jobs or rebuild a city.

And neither he, nor his campaign -- which, frankly, betrayed him and his basic decency --did anything to convince the people of the state that there is a future and that it can be a bright one.