Welcome back, Kerry
Has someone given Kerry Healey an extreme makeover?
At Wednesday night's debate, she was actually human, maybe even humane, consistently promoting things she wanted to do as governor rather than simply railing about things she wouldn't. She never brought up Ben LaGuer. She didn't accuse Deval Patrick of coddling killers. She barely even scowled at the camera.
Kerry, is that really you?
By yesterday, the difference was even more pronounced. First, Mitt Romney -- you remember, the governor of Massachusetts -- appeared on her behalf in the morning, something he hasn't done in the general election campaign. In the afternoon, Healey surrounded herself with victim advocates, veteran cops, a respected former prosecutor -- women all -- during a rally on the State House steps in which her law enforcement credentials were put on vibrant display.
This happened on the same day a Globe story reported that Patrick has basically spent more time on a tennis court than in a criminal court over the course of his career, and the contrast between the two candidates was vivid.
"He has been pounding away at this and exaggerating his credentials in a way that is [pause here] surprising," Healey said, portraying the uncharacteristic attribute of restraint. Separately, she said, "I honestly don't know anything about him at this point in time."
This is the new Kerry Healey, which is really the old Kerry Healey, which is truly the Kerry Healey we should have been seeing all along, but weren't.
A little more than two weeks ago, I made some points privately to her that I made a couple of days later in print -- that she was too negative in person, that her ads were too harsh, that she wasn't giving people a reason to vote for her even as she was berating them to vote against Patrick.
She disagreed, though the session was off the record so I can't say exactly how. The attack ads didn't just continue, they became more ominous; her tone at the critical Faneuil Hall debate remained defiantly unchanged.
Her advisers, people who have proven themselves unfit to run a big-league gubernatorial campaign, convinced her at the outset that she had no choice. They tossed out her many moderate credentials. They threw away the accomplishments of the Romney administration. They showed no regard for what most people who know her know is a reasonably engaging personality.
And they told her that her only viable strategy was a relentless attack.
Voters, however, are smart people. They looked at her résumé. They summed up her attitude. They realized they had little idea of what she stood for, only what she stood against.
The twin secrets of this campaign: Healey was a better candidate than people thought, and Patrick wasn't as good as he's been made to seem.
Patrick looked awful on the LaGuer issue, until Healey overplayed her hand and rammed it down the public's throat. He's looked hazy on too many issues, but better by contrast to Healey's carping about the past. His ethereal themes of hope and togetherness should wear thin, until you put them against Healey's calling cards of negativity and fear.
Healey could have been the champion of the victim, the savior of the taxpayers -- one moment a vigilant protector of a women's right to choose, the next moment a fiscal watchdog . She wasn't.
Now she seems to be reversing everything that has gone so miserably wrong. Romney was out before, so he's in now. Healey ignored women before; she's surrounding herself with them now. She talked almost exclusively of Patrick's shortcomings before; she's touting her own accomplishments now.
Too little, too late? Probably, though not even Democrats are buying this week's polls that have Patrick ahead by more than 20 points.
If Healey continues on this track, she'll wake up the morning after the election with some semblance of her dignity and a bit of public respect. There are a lot of politicians who ended up with a lot less.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 