Victory proves Barack Obama is about more than just stirring oratory

12 April 2012

COMMENTARY

After all the jibes that Barack Obama's slogan was fast becoming "No, we can't", the President finally has a victory worth shouting about.

Yet as he exchanged high-fives with his aide Rahm Emanuel, the feeling of relief in the Oval Office must have been palpable.

For all his soaring rhetoric, this is the first time in his 16-month presidency that Obama has overseen concrete change and it will give him momentum on job creation, a financial regulatory package, immigration reform and climate change.

But if health care reform proves unpopular, Obama will find it even more difficult to gain traction on those issues.

Sarah Palin's recent barb — "How's that hopey-changey thing goin' for ya?" — would have stung all the more if the healthcare Bill had been defeated in the early hours of today.

The Bill has sparked the anti-establishment "tea party" movement that will act as ground troops in Palin's almost inevitable 2012 presidential campaign.

British audiences will find it frankly bizarre that there can be a mass protest about something that falls well short of anything that looks like a state-imposed, state-funded NHS. But Obama knows that he was elected with the huge support of "independent" voters, many of whom are very wary of anything that smacks of centralised control.

It is the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson to provide government-funded health care coverage to the elderly and poor. Most Americans will now be required to buy insurance, and face penalties if they refuse.

To pay for the changes, the legislation includes more than $400 billion (£267 billion) in higher taxes over a decade, roughly half of it from a new payroll tax on people with incomes over $200,000 or couples who earn more than $250,000.

Crucially, for a man who was awarded a Nobel peace prize merely on the promise he offers rather than any real achievement, today confirms that the President can deliver on the big issues.

Just as importantly, he has proved that all the warm words and spellbinding oratory are as nothing unless you have the steel and horse-trading skills to get your legislation passed.

High rhetoric often needs low politics. The man from Chicago has proved he has both.

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