Golf course seduction.

Foxes guarding chicken coops have been characteristic of regulatory agencies under the Bush administration. But what are we to make of the Democratic governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, who has just appointed Ronald L. Wooten, a lawyer and lobbyist from Consol Energy, a leading West Virginia mine-owner, to direct the state's Office of Miners' Health, Safety, and Training? Wooten has been a lobbyist not only for Consol but also for an industry group called the American Mining Congress and he admits to The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward that he has helped big law firms defend coal companies from wrongful-death and injury cases filed by miners and their families.

Ironically, Gov. Manchin had Davitt McAteer, a respected advocate for mine safety, head the commission that investigated the Sago disaster. Although the two appointments seem wildly inconsistent, I think I understand what's going on.

I've seen one Democratic governor of West Virginia after another torn, on the one hand, between his loyalty to the coal miners who helped elect him and, on the other hand, to the mine owners and their lawyers and lobbyists, with whom he dines and plays golf in the capital city. The social seduction doesn't always work, but it does so far too often for the good of the miners.