The Heartland's Three Words to Recovery

Right now everyone -- I mean everyone from the President to the governors to the local village managers -- is desperately trying to find the patient's pulse. To learn what's going on deep inside in time to administer the right cure. Today I can report, with some immodesty, that I have found it...!
If Heartland America is the nation's central nervous system, then what better pulse to check than Fredericks Drug Store in the little Illinois town of McHenry. I was driving through its elm-tree-speckled main street, and stopped in to replenish my car's inventory of gum and candy bars. But a funny thing happened on the way to the checkout. I couldn't for the life of me get those packs of Doublemint off their hook. Is this crazy or what?
The forty-ish print-dress of an owner explained feistly, "Gotta make it hard to keep the little creeps from stealing them!"
"You mean the kids?"
"These days, I mean anybody! Look, I work for my money, and no slickers are going to take it away from me."
Driving on through the greening miles of our heartland state, I thought about her words. Three jumped out like a grand trilogy of an answer to the patient's plight: "Work," "slicker," and "take." As soon as those in power truly fathom the inescapable mix of pride and rage here, then we're on our way to the recovery that is historically destined to come.
"Work" is the DNA of America. The first settlers carved it out of wilderness, and working it hard ever since has been our genetic code. Mrs. Fredericks, like my parents and yours, never needed to ask what you do with your life. The curse of Eden has become the measure of a good American. Not manipulating numbers on a screen or brainstorming dreams in a spa, but honest-to-god, shirtsleeves activity that you can see, feel, taste and in 40 years get a gold watch for! Well, yes, that's corny and old-fashioned, but when hard times come, most folks suddenly get more old-fashioned.
"Slicker" of course is a tar-and-feather label Americans have been sticking on hustlers from the eastern dandies in the Robber Baron 19th century to the Wall Street vulgarians in the 21st century. Americans have always had this schizophrenic attitude toward the easy rich. Lately it's earned the name Paris Hilton factor, as in the case of drive-by billionaires who change clothes twice a day even though they never sweat. We grudgingly envy them until the times get hard for us, but somehow better for them.
"Take" is that kind of word that Americans are unarguably hypocritical about. When we take, that's gumption and glory. When the not-so-hard-working slickers take, we've got names for that. Greed...graft...corruption....and a damn good reason to pack the bums off to jail. Hypocritical or not, there is this populist rage that rises up and demands government punish these sinners. (That, by the way, is the very same government we like to get-off-our-back until times like these when we understand that government can be just as much the solution as the problem).
I may not ever meet Mrs. Fredericks again, but those in government will. Day after day after day during these angry times when hurting Americans want to find cozy Americans to blame. Political leadership now becomes less about pointing wild, angry fingers, and more about offering wise, encouraging hands.