The idea floated for the University of Minnesota’s business school to hire former United Health CEO and stock options-backdater Bill McGuire as a teacher, mentor or researcher appears to have capsized due to popular rebuke. One observer whose gag reflex the plan didn’t trip is former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger, who wrote in an email to the Minnesota Independent:

While I may have reservations about the motives of the U in asking Bill, I believe that his experiences in health care delivery and financing and in the corporate enterprise that affects both are worth listening to. Those experiences have probably made Bill a much better teacher.

Durenberger should know: He’s now ensconced in academia himself, heading the National Institute of Health Policy at the University of St. Thomas’ business school, after focusing on health care issues over a career in government long enough to match McGuire’s in the health insurance industry.

And like McGuire, Durenberger left his longtime post under a cloud. One rap on the senator — billing the government for housing while he lived at a home he owned — has eerie echoes in recent revelations that Gov. Sarah Palin did more or less the same thing in Alaska, though she has so far skirted any sanctions.