Thomas L. Friedman says he wants a president who can focus on getting America “back to work.” He writes in his New York Times column, “Who Will Tell the People,” that the Iraq war is distracting America from reaching its potential. “People want to do nation-building,” he says, “They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.”

Friedman blames the declining economy on the neglect of traditional values because of preoccupation with Iraq. Noting that working and studying hard, saving, investing and living on a budget “have given way to subprime values,” he refers to the current housing crisis. The National Association of Realtors reports that foreclosures have caused median single-family existing home prices to drop 7.7 percent during the first quarter of this year compared to 2007. The economic situation can also be seen in the rising number of unemployed citizens, which the U.S Department of Labor records as up to 5 percent of the population. But Friedman doesn’t cite statistics. He concludes America is falling behind in the technological and economic spheres based on his observations of New York’s transportation centers compared to ports in Singapore and Germany. He says his arrival abroad made him feel as though he had flown “from the Flinstones to the Jetsons.”

In a Letter to the Editor the following day, Joy Jurnack agreed, saying [I] “believe in this great nation, but want to see it concentrate its dollars and sense on those of us who live between our borders. We want to help others,” she says, “but our infrastructure is near the fracturing point, and it is high time we concentrate on us.”

Friedman was not impressed with Senator Hillary Clinton’s recent TV ad that portrays her as the experienced official ready to answer the “Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom.” Anyone can do that. Instead, he wants “a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people.”

In a comment in response to John Cole’s Balloon Juice blog post on the column, a reader disagreed with the idea that involvement in Iraq is the cause of America’s economic downslide, but reiterated Friedman’s desire for a president who will help the situation. The blogger writes that he wants a president who will tell the American public, “‘OK, here is what we are doing to ourselves. We can’t fix it overnight, but we can make it better, one step at a time.’”

Jurnack says she hopes that the next president will have the ability to foster the values Friedman lists. That would fill her prescription for what she says America needs, which is a dose of “tough love.”