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Galadriel wasn't necessarily 'unwise' to think she could take the One Ring - she recognizes that she would become evil in the process. (She probably could, in a simple question of ability: she is arguably the most powerful being, after Sauron, in Middle-Earth at this point. Tolkien wrote that Feanor and Galadriel were "the greatest of all the Eldar"; and the greatest Eldar seem to be on equal level with Balrogs etc.)
One thing I've always wondered: would the Elves' retreat to the West, if Sauron had been victorious, prove to be a false hope in the end? Sauron, being a Maia rather than a mortal, might have been able to find the Straight Road - wearing the Ring, could even Valinor resist him forever? Tolkien said, at least in late writings (published in Morgoth's Ring), that the Valar too 'faded' in a sense; and that 'Sauron at the end of the Second Age was 'greater', comparatively, than Morgoth at the end of the First'. Repossessed of his Ring, would he not return to his full might which he possessed at the end of the Second Age?
It seems to me that the West must ultimately not have been a safe refuge: else the Ring could simply be taken West and kept in, say, Ulmo's safekeeping.
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