Jim Douglas, whatever else one might say about him, possesses an absolutely superb tactical sense. He knows that the days of fronting for Entergy without paying a steep political price are over; he knows he must appear to oppose Entergy, to the extent that he can. But how to so appear?

Well, let’s say you also happened to have a few executives highly positioned in the out-of-state energy company under fire, executives who were already looking hard for a way to take the money and run? What sort of new twofer arrangement could you work out?

In unrelated news, VDB noticed this graf in the Free Press this morning: “Gov. Jim Douglas made a surprise call for a change in management at the Vernon plant and asked for delays in a decision about spinning off the plant into a new company and the Legislature’s vote on the facility’s future.”

For some odd and highly personal reason, this reminds me of Hillary Clinton offering Barack Obama the Vice Presidential nomination, on the eve of the crucial South Carolina primary, when she happened to be in second place to Obama’s first. The same unwillingness to accept hard fact, the same desperate attempt to bargain from an utterly compromised position.

If VDB could take the liberty: Let it go, Jim. Your instincts are telling you this issue is radioactive for a very good reason. It is radioactive.

In the sense of literally.