Responding to complaints that new construction delays at the World Trade Center site are the result of poor leadership from the top, Governor Pataki donned the purple robes of the rhetorician last week and exhorted hundreds of civic and business leaders to join him in a recommitment to the task. Calling the project the “highest priority of his administration,” Mr. Pataki described his commitment to the project as “ironclad,” adding that he will “not tolerate unnecessary delays.”

As proof he meant business, Mr. Pataki said his top adviser would be charged with driving the project forward. It was a tacit acknowledgement of what many people already knew: that too much input at the site has proved unhelpful. What this project needs, Mr. Pataki seems to have realized after three and a half years, is a Robert Moses. Moses, of course, was the autocratic force behind many of the most difficult building projects in city history. Though trained in the classics, he was not an orator. He was a builder. He got things done.

Whether John Cahill, a former head of the Department of Environmental Conservation, is the right man for getting things done in Lower Manhattan remains to be seen. Mr. Pataki was thought to be the captain of the ship until now. The appointment of his deputy as a new redevelopment “tsar” could well mean that the same mistakes that have left us still without an acceptable centerpiece building will be repeated. Mr. Cahill’s appointment keeps this project in the family when another family might have been what was needed all along.

Indeed, Mr. Pataki’s failures have only come into clearer focus in recent weeks. Many wondered why he insisted that Daniel Libeskind design the iconic Freedom Tower. That question remained unanswered even as Mr. Pataki suggested last week that David Childs, designer of the new Time Warner Center, would now take the lead. Many also wondered why Mr. Pataki ignored concerns raised by the New York City Police Department last August. Mr. Pataki sidestepped the question when he insisted last week that those concerns had been brought to his attention “just a few short weeks ago.”

Problems at the site are likely to persist. One person close to the project complained on Friday that “a cast of thousands” has been involved at the site from the start. He also said the security concerns Mr. Pataki claims to have resolved are far from resolution. Chief among them is the concern that police department officials have not only about the placement of the Freedom Tower but also about its very concept. Mr. Pataki said a redesign will be on the table next month. We will be looking to see if the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, applauds.

Another likely problem will relate to the five buildings commissioned to complement the central tower and to ensure that the leaseholder at the site, Lawrence Silverstein, gets his obligatory 10 million square feet of commercial space. Has anyone contemplated what it will be like – or look like, for that matter – when five of the world’s most celebrated and iconoclastic architects begin to design “place holders” on a 16-acre site? This element could make present troubles look minor by comparison. Adding Frank Gehry and Norman Foster to the mix will not make things easier.

It is Mr. Pataki who brought us to this point, and his unwillingness to admit problems exist is made even more troubling by his lack of concern for appearances. The day after his Periclean oration at Cipriani’s, Mr. Pataki was in Florida raising money for a potential national political campaign. The trip was entirely inappropriate after such a stirring verbal recommitment to ground zero, but entirely consistent with the last-minute leadership style Mr. Pataki has exhibited during the budget process this year and in his ongoing refusal to declare whether he intends to run for another term as governor.

Some have blamed Mr. Pataki for spending too much time raising money for President Bush last year and not enough on Lower Manhattan. We are beginning to wonder whether Mr. Pataki, who purchased a home in Florida last year, would rather be in that state than this one. Nor can we help but wonder when a leader will emerge to move reconstruction beyond words. Mayor Giuliani guided New York through September 11, 2001, with his presence more than his words. He would no doubt do as much to finish the work he started were he willing to leave his current corporate responsibilities aside and emerge as a candidate for governor next year.