In race for governor, likability counts

IT WAS one of those debate moments that make you grimace.

Kerry Healey, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, was emphasizing the budgetary pinch that could come from increasing local aid as much as some of her rivals favor.

In pursuit of that point, she pressed Democrat Deval Patrick to specify what percentage of the state budget local aid now constitutes.

"Local aid is about 23 or 24 percent," Patrick ventured.

"It's 19 1/2," Healey shot back.

Well, OK.

But though she may have won the back-and-forth on the facts, in doing her uncanny imitation of the smug, smart kid everyone disliked in fifth grade, Healey certainly lost it on style.

And in a way, that exchange was a microcosm of this campaign.

Patrick's big advantage in this race is that he's eminently likable. Even when you disagree with him, he strikes you as an empathic guy looking for reasonable solutions to the state's problems.

Healey's big disadvantage is that she seems humorless and hard to like -- and willing to say anything to win. Even when you agree with her, her manner is too often off-putting.

Don't think likability matters? Ask John Silber. The Boston University chief was on his way to beating Bill Weld in 1990, until he snarled at Natalie Jacobson in what was supposed to be a soft candidate-with-his-family feature. Voters recoiled -- and opted for the genial redhead.

Now, I don't doubt that Healey knows a good deal more about state government than Patrick does. Smart and hard working, she has immersed herself in policy details during her four years at the State House. Yet from the very beginning of this campaign, she has appeared more interested in hitting hot-button issues than in applying her analytic intellect to the state's challenges.

There's an art to highlighting meaningful differences with your opponent while staying likable. Bill Weld had it. Mitt Romney had it.

Kerry Healey hasn't mastered it, either in person or in her ads.

I don't think I've ever seen an ad in a Massachusetts election that has turned voters off as much as the parking garage spot she has run.

Even if one thinks Patrick messed the Benjamin LaGuer matter up to a fare-thee-well -- and I do -- it strikes you as a grossly unfair paid-media mugging.

That Healey couldn't anticipate the reaction reveals a political tin ear.

Patrick has weaknesses of his own, to be sure.

Listening to him speak at the Perkins School for the Blind this week, I was fascinated to learn that he had grown up in a two-room tenement in Chicago -- and further, that he had shared a set of bunkbeds with his mother and his sister, going from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to, every third night, the floor.

I'm being facetious, of course. If you've followed this campaign, you can probably recite that story in your sleep. Which is to say, Patrick too often sounds like a record that started to skip sometime last summer. Long after he should have added programmatic ballast, his standard pitch remains airy and untethered, billowing with inspiration but light on the kind of substance that lets a candidate claim a specific mandate once in office.

And, though he's persuaded me that he really does support the MCAS as a graduation requirement -- and even the Board of Education's new plan to focus on MCAS proficiency -- I still fear he's engaged in a calculated hedge on charter schools.

All that said, however, he displays an earnestness and a decency and a willingness to listen that is appealing. And unlike Healey, he doesn't seem to be willing to say anything to win.

Perhaps it is merely tactical, but he has eschewed the usual ridiculous rhetorical broadsides, and is actually willing to praise some of the things the Romney-Healey administration has done. And despite Healey's character-slashing campaign, Patrick hasn't responded in kind.

The higher road has its perils.

Michael Dukakis let George H.W. Bush pummel him in 1988, and he never recovered.

Bill Bradley turned the other cheek when Al Gore attacked in 2000, and paid the price.

The Democrat, then, has taken a risk here.

But in the way he's comported himself, Patrick has revealed something instructive about his character.

So, too, has Kerry Healey about hers.

I don't think voters have missed either message.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.