I missed Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont public forum in St. Albans, when it was hosted last week at the State Police Barracks (!)

After viewing the Channel 16 recording of the event, I had some doubts that there was any there there.  It appeared pitifully under-attended, and generally pretty rudderless; so I was inclined to give it a complete pass on GMD; but a conversation or two persuaded me to take a second look at the recording and share a few observations.

Observation #1:  Bruce Lisman is as underwhelming in person as he is in print.

Observation #2:  I think this pretension that he has no bias is less the product of a calculating mind than it is of his not getting out much.  

He gives the impression of someone who genuinely doesn’t know a lot about things like farming and the environment; both being pretty significant to any policy conversation in Vermont.

Observation #3:  Except for one, his selected “panelists” had trouble staying on message.

That included dairy farmer Bill Rowell, who predictably thought that things would be just fine if people would quit yapping about the streams, smaller herds and going organic and just send a whole lot more money down the pipeline so that his cohort could farm as big as possible and as profitably as possible.  I believe at one point he even said that if he did “$5 million dollars” (worth of business) in a given year, he should be able to keep as much of the profit as possible (ie. pay less taxes.)  Okay…

This probably was fine with Mr. Lisman, but then Mr. Rowell strayed a little into populist messaging, complaining about the problems in getting the Farm Bill passed with all those “nutrition programs” falling under the political axe.  He said that was unfairly targeting children, the elderly and the poor…not to mention the farmers.

So?  Taxes…bad!  Nutrition programs fuelled by tax dollars…good.   Anybody see the messaging problem here?

And Mr. Rowell went unchallenged when he suggested that reducing the number of cows being pastured in Vermont would actually be bad for the environment because there wouldn’t be enough manure to spread around!  That’s right, he sees organic dairying as a threat to the valuable resource of manure production!

I later learned informally that Mr. Lisman has been under the impression that manure pits are good for the environment.  I think he’s been hanging out with the wrong crowd, and it may very well be that a change in the company he keeps would do wonders to rehabilitate his credibility.

Then there was the CEO of the Northwestern Medical Center, Jill Berry Bowen, who briskly rolled-out everything the NWMC was doing to ensure superior care for their patients.  Though Lisman nudged her to voice concern about  “uncertainties” with the new healthcare law, like the possible exodus of doctors due to compensation issues or even hospital closings; she sunnily replied that efficiencies were under consideration and that she was confident that  NWMC  would be around to give superior care for a very long time, even with the Green Mountain Care Board calling the shots.

The only one who was on-message was Annette Hannah of Swanton, who owns a small insurance company with a niche in Workers Comp.  She was all about business and delivered just the right amount of angst and talking points to make the Chicken Little argument against the “uncertainties” posed by the healthcare bill.  Yeah, that healthcare reform stuff will sure shake-up the Workers Comp business model!  

In fact, she was so much on message in contrast to the others that she came across more as a shill.

As the 90 minute forum ambled to its close with only a couple of audience questions, which were more like personal statements,  Mr. Lisman made a brief attempt to tie everything to “the need for greater transparency” (whatever that means to him), suggesting that this would fix everything because then we would know what was working and what was not.  Duh-uh!

Piece of advice to Mr. Lisman?  Get out more; that echo chamber you entered directly from Wall Street is doing you no good.  If you want to appear non-partisan, you need to go a little outside the Chamber of Commerce for your panelists.  

And for godssake, stop referring to Democratic lawmakers as “Democrat politicians.”