'I Don't Think It's Playtime'.(interview with Francesco Rutelli)(Interview)

Francesco Rutelli, 46, made his reputation as the popular and effective mayor of Rome in the 1990s. But his Paul Newman good looks didn't hurt when Italy's left-wing Olive Tree coalition went looking for a standard-bearer in this year's national elections. Last week, in the closing days of the campaign, NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey accompanied Rutelli on a campaign swing through Sardinia. Excerpts:

DICKEY: Given all the charges of corruption and worse that have been leveled against your opponent, Silvio Berlusconi, by the courts and the press, why are you the underdog?

RUTELLI: All these questions have been raised in Italy for the last seven years. Perhaps people are accustomed to [them]. And Berlusconi is an extraordinary salesman. That's his real job. And he used his TV stations to [show]... that the country is going in the wrong direction... His TV news begins 60 to 70 percent of the time with a murder, a rape... And despite all the improvement in the economy, there is the opinion that things have gotten worse; there is a [feeling] that Italy is behind other European countries. This is not true... But Berlusconi was very clever in building a sense of insecurity--and, of course, now that sense of insecurity seems real.

So you blame Berlusconi's control of his media.

Of course. But that wouldn't have been sufficient if we, the center- left, hadn't been so divided. We had too many internal discussions, quarreling and so on. In '96, we won [against Berlusconi] with a coalition that brought together the great reformers of my country. But afterwards, the failure to really merge created turmoil.

And now?

Now we are united--really ...