fashion -- in his inaugural address: "Government has great responsibilities, for public safety and public health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government."

So, what's missing? What's missing is what infuses Edelman's whole section on Bobby Kennedy: a passionate devotion to the issue. Here was a leader consumed with finding solutions to the problems of "the excluded." Edelman recounts a day in 1963 when RFK brought the Cabinet to his office at the Justice Department and locked the door, "keeping them there for four hours to discuss doing something about poverty."

What's also missing is the recognition that faith-based initiatives on poverty cannot be pursued in isolation from the rest of Bush's agenda. No church or synagogue is anisland, unaffected by other national policies -- especially those that impact our criminal justice system and the war on drugs. The divide that starts with the poverty line has been increasingly ending at the jailhouse wall. Religious leaders will find that it's tough to be your brother's keeper when the warden holds the keys.

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To breach the gulf between the two Americas that Bush spoke about, it will take national leadership of the kind Edelman so fondly remembers. The president could start by reading his book.

Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist, the co-host of the National Public Radio program "Left, Right, and Center," and the author of 10 books. Her latest is "Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America."