But his leap to governor wasn't simply a political leap. It was the cultural equivalent of a head-on car crash, the essence of Rendell against a legislature that is, without hyperbole, the most backward and shortsighted of any in the country, its only positive is that it has created a gold rush for lobbyists. Altria, perhaps the most despised company in the world because of the cancer sticks it sells, has friends in Pennsylvania.

Rendell liked bright lights while too many members of the legislature lived out lives where Lawrence Welk still conducted, Mitch Miller still sang, and Red Skelton still did contortions. Rendell didn't just wear a personality. His whole body was a personality. And too many legislators don't like personality, in particular his personality: too gesturing, too quippy in a state where the most kick-ass group outside Philadelphia is the Amish. Legislators like governors such as Tom Ridge: see nothing, say nothing, do nothing, fail upward on the basis of nothing, and then write a book about it. A true Pennsylvania hero.

But Ed Rendell knew the landscape of the state; he had run once before in 1986, and no one forced him to run again. He knew the beauty, the mountains and streams, and the weeping gray hills in the death of autumn, but he also knew the wincing time warp of it. It's no accident that three of the greatest works about the living death of small-town life - John Updike's Rabbit, Run, Jason Miller's That Championship Season, and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter - were set in Pennsylvania. Rendell knew the death wish of a backward-looking state government that was trying to preserve a place that no longer existed - no steel, no coal, no railroads.

Ceaseless ambition played into Rendell's decision to become governor. But he wanted the state's head job because he thought he could effect radical change. He did so with a first term that was vastly underrated, with enormous strides made in education, energy, and the environment. But as time winds down in his final term, gone in 2010, the 101 days of the budget will linger like the putrid smoke of the once-mighty steel mills. He has risked turning his legacy into a muddled mess. He defiantly says he does not care. But he does.

When Rendell was mayor in the 1990s, a pattern began to show - a brilliant first term followed by two OK years in the second term followed by distraction and boredom and preoccupation with his future in the final two years. The same pattern has marked Rendell's performance as governor, and nowhere did it show itself more than in his handling of the budget. Everybody involved with it bears the stripe of failure. But, and it pains me to say this, no one bears that failure more than Rendell himself.

His budget address in February was admirable. Though he knew deep cuts had to be made, he was committed to increases in public education and college tuition relief. He was committed to the right taxes to make the budget balance - on smokeless tobacco and natural gas extraction. But the solution he ultimately floated, a personal income-tax increase, was insane given the economic times and the fear of self-interested legislators who knew such an increase would likely doom their reelection chances. Rendell was too astute politically not to realize that, but the madness of King Ed won out.

He made stupid quips that only further infuriated. At the end, he did not even have full control of his own party. He did seem focused - on losing weight. It was hard not to believe that he was wondering about life without political office, a career in all probability over after 25 years. And for all the contentiousness, and body blows, and ugliness, and endless waiting, the budget that was passed still stinks, marked by wobbly revenue projections in a still-lousy economy and a greater dependence than ever on the opium dens of America, slots parlors.

At one time or another it seemed like every sector of the Pennsylvania economy was slotted for some type of tax increase, except professional sports franchises. I know the reason, that because of complex stadium leases, any state sales tax on tickets would have to be paid for by the municipality itself. But even as a symbolic gesture, and most politics is symbolic, why didn't Rendell demand that, in these hideous economic times, the leases be reopened? Why didn't he express outrage at the greed of the Phillies, the Eagles, the Steelers, and the Pirates, the way in which they show support for their host cities by always threatening to leave if they don't get the play toy of a new stadium? Why didn't he demand that these franchises had a moral obligation to renegotiate that ridiculous sales-tax clause?

Maybe because all of that shouting would still have yielded only a pyrrhic victory. Or maybe because one of his closest friends, college classmate Dave Montgomery, is president of the Phillies. Or maybe because of his Eagles postgame gig on Comcast. Or maybe because he was worried the Pirates would leave Pittsburgh.

It is also a budget that is socially and morally unconscionable, given the ultimate refusal of the legislature to tax smokeless tobacco. There are 50 states in the country and only one has no tax on smokeless tobacco - Pennsylvania. Why? Because people like smokeless tobacco, and various legislators, rather than act in the common good and prevent cancer, would rather encourage it if it means reelection.

Maybe there was nothing Rendell could do. Somehow, some way he held on to a $300 million increase for public school funding, an amazing accomplishment. But I also know that when Ed Rendell commits to something, he gets it done: it is why he is one of the country's greatest politicians when he wants to be.

I for one would have waited a thousand and one days for a budget had Rendell refused to back down on smokeless tobacco. But what we have is what we have - a budget that was never worth waiting for, a budget that harmed dozens of social-service agencies that now have interest and penalty payments to deal with, a budget that may well become the Moment of Rendell's governorship. It would be a tragedy because of what he has done. But I still have faith in his ability to reverse the tides against him, because I admire Ed Rendell more than anyone in public life. Despite the netherworld of lame-duck status, I refuse to believe he is effectively finished.

Even if he is.