Fuelish school closing is costly for the home team

"There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."

- Aristotle

I'm still trying to forgive Gov. Sonny Perdue for Friday's ill-conceived plan of closing schools to save fuel.

Any child could have pointed out the weaknesses in this approach, although admittedly, any child probably would keep his or her mouth shut because they got to stay home.

So did many of their parents, who were not earning a paycheck for two days or burning vacation days or scrambling to make some sort of day-care arrangements because the governor of the great state of Georgia spent Friday in a great state of panic.

"The only impact is the inconvenience on families who can't make alternate child-care arrangements," said Jeff Humphreys, an economist and director of the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. He told this newspaper Friday that the two-day closing will not have much of an impact on energy savings, but would contribute to lost workplace productivity.

The Governor's Office, which appeared defensive when the plan began to draw more rapping than clapping, explained it all by saying the state's school systems actually ran the risk of running out of fuel by the end of this week if Hurricane Rita damaged weakened gulf pipelines.

So, you might ask, why didn't we wait until this week to see if that happened?

Why, indeed?

The governor could have taken a calmer approach, alerting Georgians to the potential school fuel problem. This would have allowed for more parental planning. It also would have allowed teachers to create innovative solutions, perhaps coming up with some two-day projects the pupils could complete to fill their time outside the classroom. There are a lot of possible solutions and, given a few days, we all could have worked on them.

Think of it this way:

If Michael Vick is quarterbacking the Falcons and he sees a blitz coming, he doesn't immediately take the ball and throw it out of bounds.

He recognizes the potential for danger, but he weighs his options. Perhaps the rush will not be so fierce.

Perhaps his blockers will pick up the charging defenders, leaving pass receivers open.

Perhaps he can shovel the ball to a running back.

Perhaps he can take the ball and run it himself.

Perhaps he can call time-out and saunter over to the sideline to discuss the defense and the variety of possible solutions with the head coach and other advisers.

A cool leader under fire weighs the options available. The crowd cheers when he makes a successful decision.

Nobody cheers when you throw the ball away.