adminA divided conservative majority court narrowly upheld the bulk of Obama’s defining political act, a historic law that brought the world’s richest nation closer than ever before to universal health coverage for all citizens.
“I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this — about who won and who lost,” Obama said in a televised address.
“But that discussion completely misses the point.”
But in Washington, being Washington, pundits spent the day assessing the impact of the ruling on Obama’s November election clash with Republican Mitt Romney. On the face of it, the ruling was a huge vindication for a president who expended his political capital to drive the reform through Congress even though critics said he should have focused solely on the economic meltdown.
Successive Democratic presidents had failed to pass health reform, which amounted to the most sweeping social reform legislation since the 1960s. But the ruling also offered new ammunition for conservatives fiercely opposed to what they dub “Obamacare” and will ensure the unpopular law remains a key election issue, which may trouble the president.
“The guy who was most threatened today was Obama. There was almost no place for him to hide had he lost this — the seminal act of his presidency . . .was going to go under,” Stephen Ryan, former general counsel of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, said.
“It is as big an act as killing Osama bin Laden in terms of giving his presidency a temporary boost.”
Republicans would have argued had the act been struck down that Obama spent a year-and-a-half fighting for a reform that Americans did not want, that detracted from reviving the economy and was not even constitutional. Now, Obama can turn to Romney, who has vowed to repeal Obamacare, in a presidential debate, and say the act bears the approval of a conservative-majority Supreme Court.
“Politically, it is a clear win for President Obama, who can now campaign on the legitimacy of his signature issue come this fall,” said Christopher Malone, a political science professor at Pace University in New York. — AFP.
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