ATTORNEY GENERAL Bob McDonnell must be yearning for a spot in the history books as Virginia's next Transportation Governor.
That's one way to look at the 740-word treatise he issued this past week detailing his objections to a road-funding plan authored by Gov. Tim Kaine.
The more McDonnell stands in the way of a solution, the more likely he will be left to clean up the mess next year as the GOP candidate for governor.
That ought to be plenty of incentive to get the volatile political issue off the table, for good.
McDonnell's eight-paragraph statement doesn't contain a single word about his own ideas. His objections, which make it harder for GOP lawmakers to compromise with Kaine, increase chances next month's special session will fail.
If this opportunity is missed, transportation will be yoked to McDonnell's gubernatorial campaign next year.
No serious candidate for governor would trash someone else's proposal for fixing the state's most pressing need unless he had a better idea in mind.
McDonnell insists he has no plan, but that's unlike him. In 2002, he helped draft legislation for a referendum on a regional sales tax to pay for Hampton Roads projects. He organized legislative talks that led to the bipartisan transportation compromise adopted last year.
The referendum lost in a rout, and most of last year's plan has been dismantled or declared unconstitutional. Maybe that's why McDonnell fails to mention his past support for those initiatives when he criticizes Kaine's plan, which borrows heavily from both.
Much as he might like, McDonnell can't stand idly on the roadside as the work starts on a new transportation compromise.
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