A governor critiques Kerry's bid

SAY THIS about Ed Rendell: He's no blow-dried pol offering up pleasing platitudes. Stocky, balding, gravel-voiced, yet still oddly charismatic, the governor of Pennsylvania is using a Monday appearance at Harvard Law School to critique what went wrong for the Democrats in the presidential election -- and sounding very much like a man who wants to run nationally himself in 2008.

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Which, despite having recently said he would ''absolutely" complete his term if reelected in 2006, Rendell tells the Globe he just may do.

But first, his judgment on the Kerry campaign: It oversimplified the Democratic message, offering easy-to-blur assertions rather than more-detailed explanations that could have made differences vivid.

How many of the students know the difference between the Kerry and Bush economic programs, he asks? Or the contrasting approaches on healthcare? A couple of hands go up in a crowd of 35 or 40.

''Can you imagine what the average American thinks?" he asks. ''Even though the issues that people care about are hugely on our side, we've insisted on dumbing them down."

Down to the point where Kerry's ads essentially limited themselves to asserting that Kerry had a healthcare plan that would increase access and cut middle-class costs, Rendell says. The problem: Voters soon saw Bush ads making the same basic claim, he says.

''Do we think that voters are so dumb that we have to feed them pabulum, that we can't try to explain why we are better on the issues than they are?" Rendell asks. If so, the Democrats are in trouble, because the Republicans have a better bumper sticker message, he says.

In a later interview, Rendell adds: ''They used to make fun of Bill Clinton for giving too much detail, but people knew what Bill Clinton was trying to achieve."

The fault, he says diplomatically, goes more to the political consultants than to the candidate.

In some ways, he says, Kerry ''was a terrific campaigner, but he followed the consultants' advice, and that's dangerous." I saw the consultants take Al Gore from the best debater, who destroyed Ross Perot, and turn him into somebody that George Bush stomped on."

Beyond that critique, Rendell says Democrats must repackage their message. The party shouldn't be pro-gun control but, like every law enforcement organization, anti-assault weapon, he tells the audience. It shouldn't let itself be seen as enthusiastically proabortion but rather as concerned with keeping the government out of personal decisions, even while working to reduce the incidence of abortion. That, he notes pointedly, is a position he articulated well before Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose search for common ground on abortion has fueled talk of her own national hopes.

Asked later about gay marriage, Rendell offers this: ''We're for civil unions because we believe individuals should have the same rights and benefits, but we are not for marriage, because we believe marriage has religious connotations. . . . But civil unions would grant gay Americans all of the rights and privileges that heterosexuals can obtain by marriage."

Despite two early losses, Rendell has been remarkably successful in Pennsylvania, a state with strong two-party competition. Stellar as a district attorney, he served two terms as mayor of Philadelphia in the 1990s, and, by restoring municipal finances, helped spark a renaissance in the nation's fifth-largest city. Although no Philadelphian had won the governor's office since 1914, Rendell did just that in 2002. Pennsylvania is now the second-most-populous state, after Illinois, to have a Democratic CEO.

So does Rendell, 61, up for reelection next year, have presidential aspirations of his own? ''To the extent that you can run for president post-2006, I would take a look at it," Rendell told the Globe.

He quickly adds that he is focused on his current job. And that running in 2008 would be difficult for a governor seeking reelection next year, because rivals will have a head start nationally, which is why he doubts that Mitt Romney will seek reelection. ''The timing is difficult," he says. ''Not impossible, but difficult."

But to quote the coachman in Dickens's ''The Pickwick Papers," ''That remark's political or what is much the same, it ain't true." Just ask Mike Dukakis. Or Bill Clinton. Or George W.

If Rendell does run, the 2008 field will have two things rare for Democrats: Not just a big-state governor but one who has proved that he can win in a swing state.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.