But if “the people left behind” are truly his reason for running for president, Bush will have to explain much more specifically how he plans to help them. Without using Bush’s name, Al Gore has already attacked him for telling the poor to survive “on the crumbs of compassion” instead of giving them “the tools” to help themselves. Bush may be forced into arguing that being a “compassionate” president means doing less for the poor from Washington and letting the states fill the breach. That could be a winning philosophy in GOP primaries, but it’s a weak approach to the general-election campaign that seems to have already begun. Should compassionate conservatives (“com cons” to cognoscenti) turn out to be spreading just a kinder and gentler gloss on the same old Republican agenda, Bush’s bumper sticker will peel off.

For inspiration on that bothersome “vision thing,” the Bush team might consider the work of an unlikely source–a one-time aide to Gary Hart and Bob Kerrey who has put political action behind him in favor of direct, nonpartisan community service. Bill Shore’s new book of hardheaded do-gooderism is called “The Cathedral Within.” The title is a lovely metaphor for looking inward, then outward to help build something meaningful that probably won’t be completed before death. But cathedrals are also self-sustaining business projects. Shore explains that beyond donations, cathedrals often generate their own income from accumulated properties and other money-making spinoffs. He suggests that today’s cathedral builders are “social entrepreneurs” who borrow private-sector approaches to build public solutions.

Somehow, Shore manages to offer examples without suffocating the reader in the usual cloud of saccharine. His own organization, Share Our Strength (SOS), has raised money to fight hunger by sponsoring department-store cooking demonstrations conducted by great chefs; a portion of the profits from all the extra pots and pans that get sold is then shared with SOS. Everyone wins. City Year, run by a pair of Harvard-educated social entrepreneurs, uses uniformed young adults to tutor kids and has rebuilt hundreds of schools and community centers at a fraction of the market price. Pioneer Human Services, a Seattle “community wealth enterprise,” employs only ex-cons and recovering addicts. The firm, which is now Boeing’s sole supplier of sheet-metal liners for aircraft fuselages, generates $50 million in annual revenue that helps pay for social services for the employees. These are neither businesses nor charities but inventive hybrids for the 21st century.

Government’s role in these newfangled approaches to social policy has been misunderstood. Nowadays, for instance, only 25 percent of Pioneer’s operation is publicly subsidized. But it’s important for conservatives to remember that at first, 75 percent of the money came from government, which must often play the role of banker for these social entrepreneurs. This is also true of the “faith-based organizations” so often canonized nowadays in speeches by candidates from both parties. Little-known fact: Catholic Charities has for years received roughly 50 percent of its funding from taxpayers. Bush will need to draw a strong distinction between government-run programs (usually bad) and government-supported programs (usually necessary).

Even with all the new stock market wealth sloshing around, money to help at-risk kids remains tight. The most recent list of biggest private donations compiled by Slate magazine shows that the wealthy still favor funding fancy new buildings for privileged college students over helping the poor with services, a gift that is much harder to “name” for the benefactor. But Shore argues that the greatest obstacle to success in the nonprofit world is not lack of money; it’s a failure to identify which nonprofit programs work, and a failure to make those that do work big and strong enough to dent the problems. “Replication,” and “institution-building” require better sharing of “best practices.” This sounds like foundation world flapdoodle, but it’s central to actually solving problems. Steve Case, CEO of America Online, is now exploring the creation of an AOL hub that will help organize nonprofits. If Bush is serious about his slogan, he would expand the “empowerment zones” idea (originated by the GOP) beyond tax breaks and use government as a catalyst for heavy-duty, multipronged public-private investment in desperately poor areas.

All of this may require a taste for policy wonkery that’s missing in George W. He recently told Texas Monthly that he loathes meetings and briefings. That’s fine, as long as he finds other ways to move the slabs of stone into the nave. “Wealth is being created at unprecedented levels in America, yet more of our children are in need than ever before,” Shore writes. “This is the paradox of the turn of the century. This is the challenge of our generation.” Bush senses that challenge. We just don’t know yet whether he’s serious about building a cathedral.