Will's Comment -- Prescient and Important

Romney’s melancholy but useful role has been to refute those determinists who insist that economic conditions are almost always decisive. Americans are earning less and worth less than they were four years ago; average household income is down $3,800; under the 11 presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush, unemployment was 8 percent or more for a total of 39 months but was above that for 43 Obama months. Yet voters preferred the president who presided over this to a Republican who, more than any candidate since the Great Depression, made his economic expertise his presidential credential. -- George F. Will

Conservative Columnist George Will has frequently chided the chattering academic class for their misapplied and distorted contention that in modern societies, cultural issues would subside, national interests would disintegrate, and emotionally charged values issues would dissipate into conflicts of class and materialism.

From 9-11, to the Islamic jihad warring across the Middle East, to the leisure class, nay lifestyle, of Southern Europeans compared to the diligent determinism of the North, the cultural aspects of\community have determined politics more in our times, not less.

Ethnic conflict has defined the growing warfare throughout the globe, from the invasion of Iraq, one which President George W. Bush tellingly though inadvertently called a "Crusade" to Iran's threat to "wipe Israel from the face of the earth."

This cultural trend revealed a cultural divide in the 2012 election, where economics was supposed to determine the trajectory of the election. President Obama still presides over a country with high unemployment, record enrollment onto federal subsidies, and a growing debt which is eroding our wealth and weal in the world.

Not just money matters. Respect for the identity and the legacy of the people who have come to this country looking for a better quality of life, they perhaps felt "alienated" by a fiscal manager who was looking at the budget deficits, yet ignored the cultural poverty which afflicts our schools, conflicts with the needs of our youth, and inflicts a sense of loss coupled with immediate attention to fixing problems instead of fixing this country's future to a "better story".

Life is more than balancing budgets. The nation is more than cutting deficits. The country is more than slashing spending. The Framers of the Constitution instituted limited government not in order to have less of something, but in order to form "a more perfect union."

A growing diversity of people want to be "this American, this new man" which French-American transplant turned farmer Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur described in. Diminish the size of the state, certainly, but please remind us what America is all about. President Obama has told stories, and a slimmer majority of voters were listening. The Republican Party can better tell the story, but now let's share this story with everyone, and let them add their part.