Growing a governor
You can take the candidates away from their porous stump speeches and out of their onslaught of attack ads. You can put them in the regal environs of Faneuil Hall, where so much history has been made over so many years.
And nothing changes. Nothing at all.
Deval Patrick still showed fundamentally bad judgment in the Ben LaGuer case and is still woefully short on specifics on how he's going to pay for all his grandiose plans.
Kerry Healey is still as negative as a migraine headache and talks not about what she will do for the state, only what she won't.
Christy Mihos still can't convey the gravitas that would make him a viable alternative in this partisan mudfight.
And Grace Ross? She seems really nice. But let's get beyond the political correctness and admit that she has none of the support or the qualifications that entitle her to a spot on the stage. She's a distraction, and she no longer belongs.
But back to the main show and the most memorable line of the night, memorable not because it was good. Healey was asked for a second time whether she would be willing to criticize Mitt Romney for making Massachusetts the butt of disparaging jokes as he speaks to Republican audiences around the country.
She could have hit a home run. She could have used the moment to explain the many clear differences she has with Romney, from stem cell research to a woman's right to choose. She could have said that she was personally disappointed by his pointless jokes.
But what did she say to the questioner? ``I think he's probably heard your message loud and clear."
She said this with a big awkward smile. Even her supporters seemed to groan.
Healey did OK in the debate, but trailing by double digits in the polls with less than three weeks left, OK is not enough. She got off good lines here and there, never better than when she framed Patrick's involvement with LaGuer in one simple sentence, saying, ``What you need to do is think about judgment and the patterns of behavior that person brings to the governor's office."
But the public has heard plenty about rapists and cop killers. They've seen enough foreboding images in her ads. What people want to see is whether she can lead and where exactly she wants to go.
It's great that she's against new taxes, paroled rapists, and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. But what is she for?
Patrick has the opposite problem: For-it-all-Deval, as Tom Reilly used to call him in the primary.
He's good in these forums, Clintonesque with his facial expressions and hand gestures.
And he got off his best line when he challenged Healey's law enforcement credentials, telling her, ``If you come down off that high horse of yours sometime and see how it works in the street, I'd be happy to show you around."
But effective governance isn't only about the hope that is the mantra of his campaign, but about choices.
He could have used the night to show he was willing to make them, or at least had considered them, and maybe explained exactly what he means when he keeps saying, as he did in response to a question on the MCAS last night, ``We ought to be about educating the whole child."
The two candidates have opened a hole wide enough for Mihos to drive a truck through. But to do just that, he needed last night to wipe the smile off his face, to lower his voice and, for lack of a better phrase, to appear more gubernatorial.
Campaigns are supposed to be about learning, about adapting, about growing. Unfortunately, there's been too little of that in this race.
The voters seem to be faced with the frustrating reality that the candidates are who they are, unable to rise to the moment.
They have two-and-a-half weeks to prove otherwise. The next governor will be the one who does.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 