If you want to learn about the state of America today, you're better off turning to The Donald than to The President.

Donald Trump said last week that "The middle class is disappearing and America is becoming a two-class society. Soon you will be either rich or poor."

This isn't news to squeezed middle-class Americans. But when even Donald Trump is warning about the death of the American Dream, isn't it time for our nation's leader to pay attention?

Apparently not. The cheerleader-in-chief has been traveling the country talking up the strength of the economy. In every official statement President Bush has made about the economy over the last six months, he has been relentlessly sunny, touting the falling deficit and rising Dow. Meantime, under his nose, everything that defines the American Dream of a middle-class lifestyle is at risk.

Sending your kids to college? Tuition has shot up at least 40% for public four-year schools over the last five years.

Owning your own home? Foreclosure rates have increased, new Census Bureau data show that the burden of housing costs has grown significantly since 2000, and with the boom cooling, who knows how many will suffer because they put everything into their homes.

The security of a dignified retirement? With union membership at its lowest, companies defaulting on pensions and personal saving at an all-time low, it's a mirage.

In the face of all this, Bush remains in a state of utter economic denial. At a recent visit to the Meyer Tool factory in Ohio, a state where wages are lower and jobs are fewer than in 2000, he proclaimed that "This economy of ours is strong. And one of the main reasons it's strong is because of the tax cuts that we passed."

Maybe it's strong for corporate America, but not for my dad. Like lots of New Yorkers, he's saddled with skyrocketing fuel bills, an expensive health insurance plan and out-of-pocket prescription and dental costs that are approaching the budget of a small nation.

Even Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson acknowledged that "Many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits. Many aren't seeing significant increases in their take-home pay."

So Donald Trump, famous for living in the lap of luxury, and Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs with a net worth of $700 million, are more attuned to middle-class economic anxiety than a self-styled populist President?

Bush's bubble isn't just a political problem. You can't create urgency to address our health care crisis without first acknowledging that almost one in two working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes lacked health insurance for at least part of the year in 2005.

Here in New York, the consequences are even greater. Middle-class neighborhoods are disappearing, and thanks to the high cost of living here, one in two renters spend at least a third of their gross income on housing.

If the President's optimism paid the bills, we'd all be fine. But it doesn't. So it's time that he spend a little less time smiling, and a little more time listening - if not to American families, than at least to Donald Trump.

Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy