Gov. Pat Quinn had his moment Wednesday afternoon in Springfield.

The state is confronting an unprecedented crisis — an estimated $12 billion deficit with little relief in sight — and Quinn is facing a serious primary challenge in a little more than two weeks.

The big question voters have about Quinn isn’t whether he’s honest or sincere — for a politician he’s long proven himself above average on both counts — but whether he has the vision and command to lead the state through its darkest period.

He’s appeared weak and shambling at times in his dealings with the legislative leaders, scattered in his ambitions, vague in his prescriptions.

But the State of the State address to the General Assembly gave him a well-timed opportunity to begin to erase those doubts — to deliver a muscular, declarative, eloquent and specific assessment of where we are, where we need to go and how we’re going to get there.

It’s true that the audience for such speeches is comparatively small. They’re delivered midday, carried live only on public radio, cable and Internet streams, and heard in full mostly by news junkies. Most voters just get the summaries and sound bites.

But still. Wednesday’s State of the State was easily the most important speech for Quinn since the brief address he delivered on the evening nearly a year ago when he took over for ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The moment demanded first-order wordsmithing, polished, punchy rhetoric and persuasive bullet points.<

Instead we got improv — 73 minutes of Quinn at his folksiest and most discursive, riffing off a set of notes he brought to the podium and moving with little apparent focus from point to point.

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