Either method is preferable to the unpalatable alternatives of overwhelming executive power or state-government stalemate.

Many shareholders who voted in favor of the buyout said they considered the employee acquisition - originally suggested by the pilots' and machinists' unions - as the best of three unpalatable alternatives.

But with little visible progress in negotiations with unions for the last year, Mr. Wolf is now trying to present the status quo as an unpalatable alternative.

That combination, the professor said, could convince pragmatic voters that a Republican victory was impossible and that keeping Mr. Davis in Sacramento was the least unpalatable alternative.

With both alternatives often equally unpalatable, many companies choose the third option of launching a fighter brand.

But the President's image remained far more negative than Mr. Clinton's, indicating that the Republican attempt to cast the Democrat as an untrustworthy, unpalatable alternative has yet to turn the tide.

While Congress, in a stunningly rapid bipartisan response, supplied the needed authority to moot the decision in Oklahoma almost immediately, it faces unpalatable alternatives in response to Judge Nottingham's decision.

But now Mr Gorbachev has made himself the unpalatable alternative.

Now, at the public end of a long legal process affecting one of the capital's most important figures, Mr. Rostenkowski seems caught between unpalatable alternatives.

Most people in Russia already view him as the least unpalatable alternative.