Because few others will provide such leadership, commissioners discover that they must become advocates for the programs they have been commissioned to administer. The fragmented structure of American government not only permits but invites political entrepreneurship on behalf of both idealistic policy goals and realistic practical programs.3 Governors pursue goals that cut across departments and focus their leadership on a few salient, politically popular issues. Only occasionally do the restrained objectives of a governor coincide with the few promising goals of his or her executive appointees. When that happens, as it sometimes may in education or environmental policy, the governor often provides the necessary political leadership. In most cases, however, governors would rather leave commissioners on their own. Legislators, like governors, promote specific, ad hoc interests but seldom give sustained policy leadership on behalf of particular programs. Governors and legislators sometimes actually undermine the efforts of a commissioner, as in Illinois, New York, and San Francisco when commissioners found themselves at odds with both the executive and the legislative branches in their attempts to cope with the threat of AIDS.
The jobs of commissioners become inherently political because they allocate scarce resources among conflicting policy demands from the constituents of the programs they administer. A passive stance that pushes the "policy buck" upstairs to elected officials ignores the need to prioritize conflicting demands in order to allocate resources. If programs are to do more than drift, an active stance is required-a stance in which policy goals are interpreted, articulated, and served by political priorities.
These conditions apply particularly to impossible jobs, because elected officials, whether executive or legislative, have few political incentives to grapple with the no-win dilemmas of commissioners who, with limited power, serve irresponsible, intractable clients and multiple polarized constituencies. Most of the time, the political benefit is too uncertain and contentious. Even the fortuitous movement toward one goal inevitably means moving away from another. Action stirs a hornet's nest, and the commissioners, not the politicians, are the ones who must gamble on getting stung. In fact, sometimes commissioners may be better able to help politicians than the politicians are able to help them. Effective entrepreneurship by commissioners may increase the political credit of their elected bosses; it also may trigger political embarrassment. We maintain that for commissioners in impossible jobs the primary source of influence over elected officials is support they have from the actual or potential constituencies.
The complex problems of impossible jobs, furthermore, readily admit of more than one coping strategy and style of leadership. Constituency concerns and policy goals that are idealistic, ambiguous, multiple, and conflicting may provide long-term guidance but can be interpreted in many ways in the short term. Strategies for coping with multiple conflicting constituencies vary in polarization. At the least polarized end, the coping strategy transforms the situation from incompatible demands to mutually tolerated competing demands. The balance of power shifts from one coalition of constituencies to the other, with each competitor having its own priorities. Each mutually tolerated, competing demand can be addressed by feasible short-term actions that yield some satisfaction to both sides, even if it is only the understanding that some demands get attention now, other demands, next time.
At the opposite extreme of the continuum, where impossible jobs lie, the strategy pits one altruistic, devoutly held demand against another-each one also with its own constituents and its own priorities, each side bent on discrediting the position and the proponents of the other. The controversy over abortion rights is a dramatic example, but the dispute over protection from AIDS is becoming equally intense and demanding.
No matter whether the issue is one of manageable egoistic competition or unmanageable moralistic conflict, each short-term action remains vulnerable to shifting concerns and to disastrous mishaps that appear to show neglect, even when the evidence reveals strong vigilance. In a speech, Gary Miller and Ira Iscoe tell how a single tragic attack by one patient on another was used to claim a general excess of violence in all state hospitals. A class-action suit ended with a finding of excessive violence despite clear evidence of infrequent incidents of violence.
The rise and decline of focal concerns among multiple constituencies, in more or less polarized conflict, is the "tenor of the times" to which most public commissioners try to stay carefully attuned. Recognition, however tenuous, of shifting focal concerns allows the commissioner to choose salient, practical, visible programs to address a current focal concern and, with intuitively calculated risk, strategically bypass other concerns-to cope with the impossible.
In times of consolidation and stabilization, the commissioner's strategies are more likely to emphasize efficiency in performing the core tasks of the commission. Conflicting internal coalitions may be linked with conflicting external constituencies, each constituency having its own division pursuing its own goals-as long as the underlying tension does not stimulate mutually destructive actions. In addition to emphasizing internal efficiency and to knowing the ins and outs of the standard professional operations, the commissioner may emphasize and celebrate the ideals and traditions of unity and commitment that bind and drive the commission and those who work for it. Each coping strategy is embedded in multiple, conflicting, and unrealistic concerns and constituencies. Each, therefore, is linked to forces that can lead to its own defeat. Commissioners cope with an impossible job; they never master or control it.
