Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) officially entered the 2024 presidential race on Wednesday, kicking off his campaign in an unusual and rather uninspiring fashion. The governor’s Twitter Spaces chat with Elon Musk and David Sacks was plagued by technological glitches and "very online" questions about cryptocurrency and central banking, leaving much to be desired.

Still, there was a method to the madness. DeSantis’s decision to air his announcement live on Twitter rather than on traditional cable networks was clearly a shot at the media and part of an effort to make his campaign seem more personable and approachable. This effort seemed to find some success during the subsequent Q&A portion of DeSantis’s Twitter announcement, when Musk and Sacks chose a handful of audience members to ask the governor questions directly.

But the content of those questions, as well as the discussions that followed, were just as niche and peripheral as DeSantis’s decision to host his announcement on Twitter in the first place. Though the regulation of cryptocurrency might be of interest to Wall Street and bloodthirsty bureaucrats, it barely registers as an issue among the blue-collar workers and independents DeSantis will have to win over. The same is true about centralized banking and even ESG initiatives, both of which DeSantis addressed during the Q&A extensively. This isn’t to say these are altogether unimportant issues — in fact, they’re very important economically — but good luck trying to convince primary voters of that.

Some on the Right have also criticized DeSantis for focusing too much on wokeness instead of other pressing issues, such as inflation, immigration, and the growing foreign threat from China. But that’s where I disagree. DeSantis understands that the culture war and the Left’s efforts to dismantle our institutions from the inside out are the primary issue of the day. The polls might not reflect this, but here’s the hard truth: We can debate economic and immigration policy all day long, we can cut taxes, create jobs, and foster innovation, but ultimately none of these benefits will last in a society that is tearing itself apart. We can improve wages and conditions for the average American worker, and he’ll still go home unhappy because his culture has torn faith, family, and community from him.

Economic prosperity and strength abroad are the fruits of a cohesive society — not the other way around. If we cannot agree as a country on what we should value or what role our government should play in strengthening and defending those values, then we can forget about long-term economic and national security.

As DeSantis said on Wednesday, decline is a choice. That decline begins in the culture, where the public has grown apathetic toward its responsibility for self-government, and where rogue ideologues have taken advantage of this apathy to wage war on the institutions and values that made America great in the first place. The only option now is to fight back. Restore our culture — win the culture war — and the rest will fall into place.