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This week, President Clinton embarked on the second leg of his self-styled poverty tour to tout his New Markets Initiative. Clinton's began the tour last summer by evoking images of a boyhood political hero (Bobby Kennedy) who similarly visited the parts of America that he claimed prosperity forgot. But like so many issues and events in the Clinton presidency, this poverty-fighting scheme is defined by paradox. Aiding the poor has long been high on the Democratic Party's agenda, yet it is Clinton's Democratic colleagues who are leading the chorus questioning Clinton's motives and ideas.

No contrarian voice is louder or more prominent than Peter Edelman. A young lawyer who helped staff RFK's famous 1967 tour of the Mississippi Delta, Mr. Edelman later served as a senior Clinton welfare official. He abruptly ended his federal service in 1996 to protest Clinton's signing of the congressional Republicans' welfare reform bill. Mr. Edelman considers Clinton an ineffective advocate for the poor, since the president overturned 60 years of entitlement welfare and because he waited until the waning years of his presidency to exercise his bully pulpit as a poverty crusader.

But while the messenger may be in question, the message should be heeded by members of the political Right and Left. The American economy is booming at unprecedented levels and the national poverty rate has reduced from 15 percent to 13 percent during Clinton's presidency. However, the earnings of those at the bottom fell by more than a quarter from 1980 to 1995. The culprit? Today's knowledge industry rewards skilled labor as never before, but it can be ruthlessly cruel to those who lack core competencies in math, reading, and other life skills.

The president's tours are revealing a level of poverty unknown, and even unimaginable, by most Americans. During his visit to South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, President Clinton spent the morning visiting on the porch of Geraldine Blue Bird who boards 28 people in her five bedrooms. To illustrate the long-term nature of the problem, not to mention the borrowed scripts that structure politics, Pine Ridge was also a destination on Bobby Kennedy's poverty tour. Incredibly, the Oglala Lakota Sioux suffer from a 73 percent unemployment rate as well as the rampant alcoholism that is common to most Indian reservations.

Responding to this level of poverty is necessary not only for the individuals and communities most affected. It also benefits those who are prospering. An increasing percentage of economists project that today's labor shortage will remain in effect for the foreseeable future. Beginning early in the next century, when the Baby Boomers will retire in unprecedented numbers, there will not be enough working-age adults to take their place. The bottom line is that we do not have a worker to spare, and our country's sustained competitiveness rests on the availability, knowledge, and strength of our human capital.

So if the messenger is in question, but the message is correct, what options exist for an effective solution to our dilemma? The president's New Markets Initiative offers tax credits and other federal incentives to induce private sector investment in inner cities. While this approach is a meaningful departure from previous government solutions (e.g., Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty which was at its height when Senator Kennedy made his tour), it is insufficient to make a long-term impact on poverty.

Real and lasting economic opportunity will only be realized when community leaders decide to take action themselves. To find out how this potential can be best realized, the president needs to take a long look at the efforts of Governor Bush. Governor Jeb Bush, that is. The younger of the two Bush brothers leading large southern states has implemented an innovative program called Front Porch Florida.

That name will sound familiar to Indianapolis residents who are aware of Mayor Goldsmith's Front Porch Alliance. This is no coincidence. Jeb Bush patterned much of his initiative after the Indianapolis model, and the mayor served as a keynote speaker when Front Porch Florida was launched.

What makes Front Porch Florida distinctive is that it turns to citizens, not politicians, to define the specific problems in their urban core communities and to provide positive, long-term solutions to those problems. The key principles of the initiative include a problem-solving strategy will be neighborhood-driven, asset-based and focused on community relationships.

While community-led, the governor's office will offer more than a bully pulpit and a pat on the back for local leaders. The state has invited distressed neighborhoods from across the state to apply for Front Porch status. Based on selection criteria such as a community's demonstrated commitment to resident involvement, stronger educational standards, and enhanced health care coverage, the state will select 20 Front Porch communities by the year 2002.

These communities will have access to $5.2 million in block grant funds designated for the project, which is to be spent on microcredit loans, environmental clean-up, an urban homesteading initiative similar to one that the Hudson Institute helped Michigan adopt earlier this year.

Perhaps more important than the funding, Front Porch communities will have access to governor's office staff who will serve as a civic switchboard. These staff will connect targeted communities with other federal and state funding, help them navigate the bureaucratic minefields of government agencies, and assist efforts to leverage resources from private, non-profit agencies necessary to implement local Neighborhood Action Plans.

As President Clinton continues to visit impoverished neighborhoods and calls the nation's attention to the plight of the poor, let's remember that it is the strength of those inner-city residents more than Washington's solutions that will be the best antidote to eliminating poverty in their midst.