Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

Two men who dislike each other a fair amount are Jim Gilmore and Tim Sullivan, the former governor and the longtime president of the College of William and Mary.

Gilmore, a fierce conservative, spent four years as governor promoting tax cuts as well as wholesale reform to our higher education system. Sullivan, a traditional academic leftist who was once a policy advisor to then-Gov. Chuck Robb, spent those same four years kicking back. Sullivan was often shrill in his objections to Gilmore's tax cuts and largely dismissive of the governor's efforts to change the way the public colleges and universities operate.

Today, some 10 months out of office, Gilmore is still defensive of his reign and the policies he promoted, and Sullivan, who is still heading William and Mary, is as shrill and dismissive as ever to anyone and about anything that doesn't fit his view of what the world should be.

So how could two people so different be so much alike? And what can be learned from them?

Well, it seems that each has a knack for grabbing headlines in ways that don't necessarily advance their causes. And the powers-that-be in increasing numbers think of them in ways that probably neither would prefer.

Gilmore has spent much of his time since leaving office heading a congressional panel on terrorism while simultaneously prodding a headhunter to find him just the right job. He's now in the D.C. and Tysons Corner offices of Kelley, Drye & Warren, a New York-based law firm, and reportedly enjoying life as an ex-governor.

But it is Gilmore's return of late to the newspapers that shows little has changed in his demeanor. He's still displaying the same mulishness that so many found so unbecoming the last two years he was in office.

For about three months now Gilmore has been engaged in a public back-and-forth with the state library over whether he is withholding - or has wrongly destroyed - official documents the library says it was due when he left office in January. The Library of Virginia is the official repository of all former governors' non-personal papers (with a few exceptions) so that their administrations' records will forever be at the fingertips of historians and journalists and the like.

Most glaring of the missing papers are those dealing with the issues that defined the beginning of Gilmore's administration as well as its end - the car tax cut that brought him into office and how he responded to and coped with the September 11th terrorist attack on Virginia soil at the Pentagon as he was winding down his last few months in office.

Now lawyers for Gilmore and Nolan Yelich, the state librarian, are hashing out the matter with a mediator. If mediation is unsuccessful, the whole thing may well end up in court.

Whether it's Gilmore or Yelich who is right is somewhat beside the point. Because of Gilmore's years of obstinacy, folks automatically assume that he's the bad guy in this soap opera, and that, to be sure, is unfair to him.

What's not unfair to Gilmore in people's eyes is his continued public defense of his build-at-all-costs transportation policy. It has become increasingly apparent that his very aggressive road-building program severely lacked the money it needed to succeed. When higher-ups at the Virginia Department of Transportation repeatedly warned Gilmore that they were hundreds of millions of dollars short - and would continue to be - the governor seemingly ignored them. Gilmore eventually sacked the chief sounder of those alarms, transportation commissioner David Gehr, a decent VDOT loyalist who rose through the agency's ranks to its top spot. Nobody today thinks Gehr was anything other than a scapegoat.

The tie that binds Gilmore and Sullivan is the reaction their names elicit from people who have dealt with them over the years. Gilmore is stubborn. Sullivan is, well, he's over the top, and he is so in a most impolitic sort of way.

And this is where we can learn from polar opposites who, strangely, have similarly stumbled.

Nobody doubts Sullivan's passion for higher education in Virginia. He's a great defender of his college and promoter of its mission. But he goes about it all wrong.

Recall, if you will, the widely reported open meeting he held last month on campus with students, faculty, and staff. He was there to discuss the state's revenue shortfall and the pressure it's putting on the college. In a Khrushchev-like podium-pounding performance, he ranted against Gilmore and his tax cuts, called legislators idiots (in so many words), and chastised the hoi polloi for not being generally in favor of higher taxes. In short, he offended most everybody he depends on for money; he bit most every hand he needs for his feeding.

But this is nothing new. Sullivan has been doing this for years. And he does it all in the name of higher education. He shouts it in speeches and screeches it in op-ed pieces. In his eyes, it seems, if you're a Democrat, you're pretty good; if you're a Republican, you're an imbecile. Not necessarily a good position to take - especially at high decibels - in a state whose policy-makers are more and more Republican.

Sullivan's front-page harangues have caused a number of his colleagues - presidents at other institutions - to wince. They privately admit to being concerned that they're being caught up in governors' and legislators' eye-rolling reactions to him. They have reason to be concerned.

Both Gilmore and Sullivan have spent the bulk of their careers serving the public in one way or another. Each deserves the noble recognition that rightly accompanies their long careers.

But it is obvious that each also has fallen in the same trap that so many do when they're hoisted to greater heights and then get comfortable there. Both Gilmore and Sullivan, it seems, have lost the ability to see themselves as others see them. And that's generally always the precursor to obstinacy and believed omnipotence.

This juxtaposition and plucking of Gilmore and Sullivan admittedly may seem a bit peculiar. But it was upon seeing this odd couple sitting near each other at a recent ceremony at the state Supreme Court that brought into focus just how alike two can become who in so many other ways are such great opposites.

The economy is in the tank. Money is in short supply. People are on edge. There are challenging times ahead for those in positions of public leadership, whether they're in the Capitol or in university offices. And the unusual times ahead call for the like-minded and the not-so-like-minded to get on the outside and look inward.

It'll be necessary that decision-makers who'll be out front always be able to see themselves as others see them. There are examples that should be followed - and examples that shouldn't be.

Your thoughts?

The Bryant Archive

Warner's judges

Eastern stars

The wreck of old No. 39

It'll be Goode in the Fifth

The Wilder gamble

The politics of water

On Labor Day, coal miners and being a Republican

Shadow responsibilities

A time for all Virginians to pull together

The people versus the powerful in Northern Virginia

A media double standard?

Warner's California Ways

Bill Howell: the Un-Wesson