At first glance or thought, the most important question after the election might be “Who Won?” For me, though, there is another question that is very important.

What do I do if my candidate lost? The passions that seemed to accompany this election were as high as I have ever seen them. Most people that I know seemed to feel a sort of “do or die” way about it. In America we have this attitude that every storm is the “storm of the century.”

Our informational outlets play everything up as if we have never crossed these bridges before. There has never been a game like this one, they say. This election was the most important in a long, long time. For once, that might be true.

As this is written, we may know who won. Going into yesterday (Tuesday) the election was too close to call. Most of the time, those “too close to call” events are really not that way, but I am a political junkie and I really had no idea who would win. It was a toss-up, a flip of the coin, as many said.

The question now, though, is what do we do if our candidate lost? Winning is easy. We rejoice. Losing is much more difficult, but how we respond is just as important. If the problems facing America were so dire before the election, the winner did not solve them simply by being elected. Our problems have not disappeared with the election of 2012.

So the question that has to face about 50 percent of the population is “what to do now that the election is over?” What do I do if things did not go my way? Easy question, difficult answer.

I received a call this past week from a gentleman who reminded me of the times when no matter who was elected, America got on with the work that needed to be done. We sort of licked our wounds, swallowed our pride and moved on the down the road as a great country.

The office of the Presidency, no matter who occupied it, was still respected and both sides worked with each other to solve the problems. Today, the most important post-election question for our country has to do with that sort of attitude. Can we solve our problems?

Quite frankly, I am not sure that we can pull together these days. The divisions are so deep and the problems are immediate and huge. The problems are beyond one man’s abilities and must be solved with a unified spirit and sacrifice. I don’t know exactly when we lost it, but we did. It’s sort of like that great, old song of my youth, “We’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

We call ourselves the United States of America, but if we can’t remember what it means to be “united,” there was no winner yesterday and the USA won’t be a winner tomorrow.