Debate rich on issues
It was not the format or the crowded stage that undermined Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey's debate performance last week. The Rose Garden strategy that seemed to make so much sense last summer simply backfired. She was not ready for prime time.
While the Republican candidate for governor spent months standing silently behind Governor Mitt Romney at press conferences, the Democratic, independent and Green-Rainbow candidates were making the rounds of Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce forums, sharing the same stage and honing their response to one another's message. Her decision to shun those exchanges until the Democratic primary narrowed the field was a major miscalculation.
To the credit of the media sponsors of the four remaining gubernatorial debates, they did not bend to the panicking Healey's fundamentally undemocratic demand that future forums be limited to the two major party candidates, herself and Deval Patrick, the Democratic nominee. Aside from it being a reversal of her prior position that every candidate on the ballot had earned the right to participate, Healey's desire to exclude Christy Mihos, the independent, and Grace Ross, the Green-Rainbow candidate, ignores their invaluable contribution to the process.
Mihos and Ross are neither colorful cartoon characters nor representatives of some lunatic fringe. Each is committed to ensuring that certain issues get a fuller airing than the two entrenched political parties are providing. For Mihos, it is the Big Dig and the consequences of corruption and mismanagement for taxpayers. For Ross, it is economic disparity and the fallout of corporate tax breaks and state budget cuts for the poor and working class. Those are neither inconsequential issues nor minor constituencies.
For all the superficial commentary on Mihos's body language and Ross's wardrobe, viewers heard unvarnished truths about economic and social policy from those candidates -- a refreshing change from the focus-group-tested talking points of Patrick and Healey. ``The difference between folks at the top and the rest of us is so extreme that it would be impossible to have the concerns of ordinary people represented by the two millionaires nominated by the major parties," says Ross. ``I am there to inject some realism into the political conversation."
By now, everyone in Massachusetts who is remotely interested in state government knows that Healey would roll back the state income tax immediately and that Patrick would do so only if economic conditions improved. Without Mihos and Ross on that stage, we would get to hear that point made a half-dozen times in a half-dozen ways, with no mention of the tax waivers that have benefited wealthy corporations.
Mihos and Ross have had their ears open in the months they have been going from pancake breakfasts to potluck suppers. They heard about a lot more than illegal immigrants, taxes, and sex offenders, the main preoccupations of Healey's fear-mongering campaign. Mihos's message resonates because the public is furious about the lack of accountability on the Big Dig. Ross makes sense to parents who know that MCAS scores are an ancillary issue in education when 1 in 4 high school students is dropping out.
If elections were only about who has the best chance of winning, we could dispense with debates altogether and vote on the basis of campaign advertising and media coverage. But we do not have debates to determine whose candidacy is more viable; we have them to decide whose ideas make the most sense. Limiting participation to those whose poll-tested ideas have the least likelihood of giving offense guarantees us more of the constipated political discourse that has turned so many voters off to politics.
No, voters are not likely to elect either Mihos, the millionaire owner of a convenience store chain, or Ross, the Harvard-educated community organizer. However, the candidate they do elect will be better for having had to debate them.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 
