Myths are not fictions. They are statements of ideals and aspirations, of fond dreams. Myths clarify the goals that guide action, and they provide assurance that the commission is really worth the extraordinary efforts and sacrifices that it demands from both its staff and its constituents. Myths furnish orientation for the public and a sense of worthy mission for those in the organization. The farseeing, intuitive political entrepreneur reinforces and perpetuates those practical, short-term actions that move the agency and its constituents toward the long-term, idealistic goals. Perhaps the most crucial coping strategies mentioned in this volume entail some form of balance between mythical long-term goals (e.g., a safe city) and pragmatic reality (people attack one another). Mark Moore provides a particularly cogent example of this in his analysis of the roles of the police chiefs Darryl Gates of Los Angeles, Lee Brown of Houston, and Kevin Tlicker of Philadelphia. All of them mounted action agendas that articulated and symbolized both the ideal goals of the community and the efficacy of their programs.
People must maintain some myths, and they must act realistically. All people could be educated, all diseases could be prevented, all criminals could be apprehended, all prisoners could be rehabilitated. Limited resources must be used to prevent diseases when that is possible, but some resources must be reserved to manage diseases, such as schizophrenia and AIDS, that no one knows how to cure. Trying to apprehend as many criminals as possible in high-crime areas is necessary, but so is reserving some resources for prevention in low-crime areas.
Myths, to be sure, are sometimes misused in symbolic exercises that are designed to put an attractive facade on burdensome actions and to prevent any influence on operations. Or a myth may be a fine cover for doing nothing. The myth of universal compulsory education has long been a cover for strategic inaction in apprehending truants, a myth that relieves the school from having to teach children who are, in fact, very hard to teach and relieves those parents who do not want their children in school. Myths can also mislead people into believing that the commission is providing public goods, when it is actually providing private goods for those supplying and conducting the operations of the commission. Note how some physicians, pledged to the Hippocratic oath, profit from unnecessary surgery or from overhasty discharge when insurance no longer covers the costs. Note also how some hospitals, pledged to restore the health of the patient, are built for the convenience of physicians, not of patients.
The dramatic impact of symbolic actions may outweigh the dangers of their theatrics. Edward Lawlor provides an excellent example of the use of symbols to support both worthy and very pragmatic ends. When a chef of the Bon Appetit restaurant in San Francisco died of AIDS, Dr. Ken Kizer, the California health commissioner, took the opportunity to eat a much-publicized meal in the restaurant, showing his confidence in his beliefs about the lack of danger of being infected. "It was a symbolic thing," said Dr. Kizer, "but... I think it turned a lot of people around."
In order to effectively maintain myths of idealistic goals (the unlikely cure of AIDS) while acting realistically on short-term projects (relieving the fear of AIDS infection from food), one must choose actions that have at least four properties: The actions can be done; they relieve focal concerns; they partly confirm the myth; and they require minimum and clearly justified restrictions on other ideals, such as safety, freedom, justice, and privacy. Some people can be educated without undue coercion; therefore, all people could be. Some diseases can be prevented without undue compulsion; therefore, all diseases could be. Some criminals can be caught without undue force; therefore, all criminals could be. Some prisons are both secure and humane; therefore, all prisons could be. These statements may indeed seem like non sequiturs; logic was never the main rigging for either the focal concerns or the cherished ideals of human societies. Moore demonstrates that the police commissioners whose coping he analyzed fitted their strategy to the historical context, to the focal concerns and current expectations of powerful constituencies, and to the capabilities of their organization. Moore believes that what is important is for the manager to find not only a successful strategy but a value-creating (or a value-affirming) strategy.
Although the myths guiding impossible jobs are extremely weak (as we maintain), they are used often in appeals to idealism. The Utopian impulse never dies and is regularly expressed in writing and advocacy about crime, corrections, health, and welfare. The persistence of idealism makes it possible to marry the Utopian aspects of myth to emerging, favorable political conditions on behalf of reform. Latent hope is again aroused. Such processes, nevertheless, are brief, because the perceptions concerning the irresponsibility and intractability of the clients will reassert themselves in due course.
As idealistic and formidable as the goals are, commitments to such impossibilities as the abolition of disease or crime need not be doomed to failure. J. D. Thompson's discerning analyses of evaluation processes shows that the very ambiguity and remoteness of the idealistic goals and the very weakness of the expertise mean that progress will be judged, not against compelling evidence of goal attainment, but by some social or historical comparison.1 Current, very limited success stories will be linked to past, complete success stories (e.g., the University of Southern California research on AIDS immunization in collaboration with Jonas Salk, the hero of research on polio immunization), or to stories from neighboring jurisdictions. The effective use of comparisons of processes that are instrumental means to the goals but not actual goal-attainment is demonstrated in the following statements: "Our achievement test scores are still below the national median, but they are rising faster than those of any district in this state." "Our crime rates are still rising, but more slowly than those of any other city this size." The oldest assurance is still viable, if issued in a context of vigorous goal-directed activity:' 'We are fully committed; we are doing everything humanly possible."
Weak myths, then, both guide and make one vulnerable. To reduce the vulnerability, a commissioner may choose strategic actions that have four properties.
People are indeed overly inclined to attribute the plight of clients to unchanging, internal, controllable but not controlled causes. People are also, however, disposed to have some compassion for the plight of clients and to deeply respect the strength and courage needed to overcome such problems. Success stories, however few there may be, that demonstrate the accomplishments of persistent and extraordinary individual efforts are very popular. The persistence and effort may be both the client's and the commission's. The aim is simply to modify the attribution from "controllable but not controlled" to "controllable and controlled." Success stories are reassuring because each person is a possible future victim of externally caused, long-term illness and injury-or victims of just bad luck.
The success stories, however, have some negative side effects. They confirm that the attributed cause is in fact controllable, and they thereby reflect upon those clients who do not control and overcome the causes of their plight. Even so, they also provide real evidence that the attainment of altruistic goals is sometimes possible. Thus a concrete success story serves both to maintain the myth of the impossible goals and to partially protect the commissioner against sanction for not having achieved the impossible goals.
Fundraising among supportive constituents (whether lobbying for tax money or asking for private gifts) provides special opportunities to publicize success stories while simultaneously marshaling the power of multiple and conflicting constituencies. To be sure, once a constituency is polarized against the clients, fundraising achieves nothing. But there is almost always an opposite pole, a coalition of constituencies ready, willing, and capable of fundraising, both for the altruistic goals of the commission and for their own identification as generous, responsible, and leading citizens. Accordingly, coping with illegitimate and intractable clients has been made more feasible by regular and frequent attention to the communication of exceptional success stories and regular and frequent marshaling of supportive constituents for fundraising.
