The America Idea is not about economics.
And that "the world" is about economics is something Marxists believe in.

PEGGY NOONAN:
"The explosion of joy in large pockets of the country Tuesday night was beautiful to see, and moving. For me, at the end of the evening, looking at live shots of the throngs in Chicago's Grant Park, I flashed back to 1960 and how it felt, as a child, to see that the grown-ups had elected a Catholic president. I can't say we stood taller—we were Irish, we already stood tall—but yes, there was a wave of feeling: "What a country," "What a development!" The other day, when I said that to the writer Henry Louis Gates, head of African American studies at Harvard, he told me he'd grown up in a Catholic neighborhood and had celebrated that night with his neighbors because he thought he was one of them. That struck me as a very American anecdote."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122600597583706149.html

Steyn is also placing too much importance upon the presidency in the same sense that Dems commonly see the President as god.

You could say *at least* that one important aspect of the President of the United States is in terms of symbolism.
So, with Bush you had the symbolism of American resolve and determination. To do "what was necessary, rather than ignore a serious problem". This of course earned Bush some hatred, but so be it.

Obama will probably plot some different course.
"Change, Change, Change" was the campaign slogan. But there is no doubt he will bring less change than small number hope for, yet the fact that he has black skin and was elected, can be said to have already delivered on his "promise".