When a situation seems hopeless, there are usually two options. Choosing to soldier on is often a noble endeavor, but sometimes it is simply wiser to cut one's losses and turn away.
The latter was Harriet Miers' choice last week, as well as President Jo Ann Gora's recently.
Miers faced opposition from a wide variety of individuals from the moment President George W. Bush announced her nomination to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. After weeks of scrutiny and speculation regarding her competence, Miers asked Bush to withdraw her nomination. He agreed.
Regardless of my personal disagreements with Miers' political orientation, I have a great deal of sympathy for her. To be so roundly socially rejected is a profoundly difficult thing to face. At least, Miers chose to maintain some dignity and step away from nearly certain defeat in the Senate confirmation hearings.
She became, to me, like an awkward fifth-grader in the cruel microcosm of middle school, and for a moment, I put aside my disdain and had empathy for her. She's made a difficult choice and will hopefully be better off.
The entire Miers situation was reminiscent of Gora's recent decision to restart the provost search. The two prior finalists for the position didn't seem to meet Gora's standards, so instead of "settling" for one, she made the choice to cut her losses and try again.
Not only that, last week Gora hired a firm to aid in the decision-making process regarding new provost candidates.
Although this will prolong the amount of time the university goes without a provost and will incur a greater total cost for the hiring process, it was probably the wisest choice. Each of the previous candidates had supporters, but evidently they were not convincing enough to persuade Gora that they were the best for the university.
Similarly, Miers rescinding her nomination means that a new candidate had to be found and the confirmation process has begun anew - also that O'Connor must serve a while longer on the court instead of spending more time with her ailing husband.
But Miers and Gora, though faced with lose-lose options, managed to salvage some hope by admitting they'd been backed into their respective corners.
As the one-year anniversary of the 2004 presidential election approaches, I recall numerous individuals telling me that they voted for one candidate or the other because he was "the lesser of two evils," or that they voted against one candidate instead of voting for the other.
Obviously, no presidential candidate will ever be unanimously endorsed by all Americans, but when facing an important choice in which neither option seems very satisfactory to a significant number of decision-makers, wouldn't it be nice to be able to start over?
It's not feasible, of course, to throw out both candidates right before an election - still, there's always Ralph Nader if you're really opposed to both candidates - and sometimes soldiering on in the face of adversity turns out better than turning back.
However, when it's possible to reject the current alternatives, assuming none of them seem to have any promise, cutting losses ought to be acceptable. Sometimes the new directions found by backtracking were really the best all along.
Write to Marie at
mmzatezalo@bsu.edu
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