It used to be that politics was a battle of ideas, settled in the end by a vote. But these days politics is more the art of misdirection than anything else. With one hand, draw attention to something that is appealing – like the flag, mom, apple pie, or talk of bipartisanship – so that no one sees what you are doing with your other hand.

When Governor John Rowland opened the 2001 session of the General Assembly last week, he extolled the virtues of bipartisan cooperation. What else could he do? He was a Republican governor looking at a sea of mostly Democratic faces. When he announced that he would back legislation enabling direct primaries, a measure favored by Democrats, it appeared that he may be as good as his word on an issue of vital interest to the public – election campaign reform. The cheering didn’t last long, however. Gov Rowland quickly added that he would veto any campaign reform bill that used tax money to pay for election campaigns, which is central to the Democrats’ reform plans.

It was a clever strategy by Mr Rowland to steal the Democrats’ thunder before he zapped them with his own lightning bolt. In essence he ensured that Connecticut would not be joining Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont in enacting strong campaign reform legislation that allows candidates to have the state finance their campaigns if they choose to forgo outside money. What will come out of the partisan wrangling on this issue is anyone’s guess, but it’s not likely to be a national model for reform.

The irony is that all the earnest talk about election campaign reform that we will hear in the current legislative session will amount to nothing more than misdirection. The purpose of the debate will be to make people believe that the democratic process in Connecticut is being made stronger and healthier. The real business of the legislative leaders in Hartford this year, however, will be to gerrymander legislative districts based on the 2000 census. If you watch closely, you will see that the purpose of their labors will be to provide Connecticut voters with fewer choices, not a stronger democracy. Every legislator will work hard to ensure that his or her own seat will be preserved. Democratic legislators will work to make Democratic districts more Democratic, and Republican legislators will work to make Republican Districts more Republican. If they work together under the banner of bipartisanship, they will both get what they want, and state voters can look forward to fewer and fewer choices on the ballot.

Last year, 71 of the 187 state legislative races went uncontested, including two right here in Newtown; Republicans Julia Wasserman and John Stripp were reelected without opposition. There were no challengers in 40 percent of the state House races and 31 percent of the state Senate races. In most of the rest of the races where there was a challenger, the contest wasn’t even close. Every single Democratic incumbent won reelection last November, and just three Republican incumbents were unseated.

So when Gov Rowland joins the Democrats in saying that direct primaries in Connecticut will open up the electoral process by taking the nomination process out of the hands of the party bosses, we say, “Yeah, right. Show us what you’ve got in the other hand.”