If your selection function optimizes for minimized damage, not maximized improvement, sure.

Same scale, different sign, and varying by person. One person's maximized "improvement" is another person's maximized damage. Sometimes "do nothing" is the best we can hope for, because the alternative is worse.

See also Duverger's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

I think in this case "least bad" means "least bad in the worst case".