Keller @ Large: Healey's final debate performance was mission accomplished
NEEDHAM - "My opponent thinks government is the solution to everything," said Geoff Diehl of Maura Healey, who spent much of Thursday night's gubernatorial debate making the same point. If she doesn't have a "program" in mind to fix every major economic and social ill, she intends to appoint a high-level bureaucrat to create some and be "accountable."
Diehl featured this indictment in his closing statement because he thinks it's a huge negative, and anywhere from 30% to 40% of the voters may agree. Sadly for the Pride of Whitman, 40% isn't even close in horseshoes.
From Healey, the final cameraside chat with a statewide TV audience was a chance to finally uncork the analogy everyone aware of her stellar basketball career - as is anyone who's ever seen a Healey ad or photo op - had been anticipating all night. "I was a point guard," she said. "It's all about the assists, it's never about the points scored."
Funny coming from a candidate who devoted most of her time last night to scoring points. Diehl blocked a couple of her shots, notably rebutting her promise to be a tax cutter by noting she supports the Question One tax hike. But she scored at will on abortion rights, and called election denier Diehl out for being an election denier, which is undeniable, although he denies it.
Another layup with the 70-plus percent of the public that approves of Gov. Charlie Baker's performance - her repeated, glowing allusions to Baker's work, citing his support of abortion-rights protections after the Dobbs decision as "the kind of leadership we need." And several times Healey dunked on the Legislature, boasting about having "called them out" on the need to return surplus revenues to taxpayers.
The last time we elected a Democratic governor who featured Legislature-dunking in their repertoire was 2016, when Deval Patrick vowed all sorts of "reform" after hollering to his jubilant supporters on primary night to "let them hear you on Beacon Hill." He immediately found that rattling their musty cages produces dust and squawking but rarely reforms.
What fresh, compelling new ideas will a Gov. Healey bring to bear on the big problems - housing, transportation, energy costs and inflation - of the moment? Good luck fleshing that out from Thursday night's Battle of the Bumper stickers. Diehl wasn't making anyone forget Einstein, but he at least drew a laugh (ok, a silent smirk) when he proposed diverting a stream of pot revenue to rebuild fire and police stations.
Healey's debate rhetoric and most of the bullet-point "plans" she's been releasing seem less about reform and more about reassurance - that not only will she not be the far-left cartoon character Diehl imagines, but will instead be Baker 2.0 with a twist: a DINO, not a RINO. For any part of the massive support she's winning in every poll that worried about a lurch too far to the left, Healey's performance was a mission accomplished, a calming (if, at times, droning) demonstration that she is laser-focused on "fiscal stewardship."
Her retro brand: four more years of the familiar low-key, mostly competent, drama-free governance Massachusetts seems to have come to love.
It seems highly unlikely Thursday night's encounter changed the arc of this seemingly lopsided race. But it did raise a question to keep the Twitter conspiracy theorists busy: has anyone seen Healey and Baker photographed together to prove they're not the same person?