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Impossible Job. At week's end Rumor accepted President Leone's mandate and set about trying to salvage a workable government that could pull the country out of its economic morass. Some cynics insisted that his job had actually been made easier: Leone's call was proof that no other Italian politician cared to challenge Rumor for an impossible job. Others suggested that if worse came to worst, Rumor could fall back on the old remedy for recurring summertime crises by forming a balneare (seaside) government that could run the country until the vacation season ended. The truth was, however, that Italy's situation had become too grave for bathing-suit governments. Emergency measures that only a genuine government can apply are waiting to be taken. Italy, as Dante observed almost seven centuries ago in the Purgatorio, is once again "a vessel without a pilot in a loud storm." Unless serious steps are quickly taken, it may well sink before the winds and waves abate.