It's the joke about the two guys chased up a tree by a bear - one puts on running shoes. You don't need to outrun the bear, just outrun the competition.

Evolution doesn't proceed by finding optima, it proceeds by finding incremental improvements. These should home in on local optima, but these are unlikely to be global optima (e.g. the backwards vertebrate eye). Also, the enviroment and the definition of "better" is continually changing.