PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has succeeded where all Democratic presidents of the past century failed, by seeing through the passage of legislation on Sunday night that will provide near-universal healthcare for Americans.
For the first time in American history, Congress has established, in the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the closing minutes of Sunday night’s debate, that healthcare is “a right, not a privilege”.
The historic, 219-to-212 vote took place between 10.30pm and 10.49pm in the House of Representatives, and was won by only three votes more than the 216 required for passage.
Thirty-four Democrats voted No with the Republicans. An electronic board, with Yes in green and No in red, tallied the vote.
When the figure 215 flashed up, Democrats began chanting, “One more vote. One more vote.” When the number 216 appeared, Democrats broke into wild applause and cheered, “Yes we can! Yes we can!” There was stony silence on the Republican benches.
The victory, after more than a year of bitter public debate, has restored lapsed energy and optimism to the Obama presidency.
“This is what change looks like,” Mr Obama said in the speech he delivered from the East Room of the White House just before midnight. “We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.”
The vote will also burnish Mr Obama's image abroad. "The US is the only advanced industrial nation that does not provide or guarantee healthcare coverage for virtually all of its citizens," the New York Timesnoted. "It is a moral obligation to end this indefensible neglect of hard-working Americans."
Failure to pass the Bill would have crippled Mr Obama’s presidency, commentators said. Just two months ago, when Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate, healthcare reform had appeared moribund.
Mr Obama gambled his political future, saying he was determined to pass healthcare, even if it cost him a second term as president. He threw himself into lobbying Democratic representatives and explaining the Bill to the US public. The Bill was resurrected, with Mr Obama and Ms Pelosi shepherding it to Sunday night’s skin-of-the-teeth victory.
In the closing words of his late-night speech, Mr Obama said Sunday’s vote represented “another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American Dream”. Though he used the pronoun “we”, his words rang equally true when one substituted “I”.
“Tonight,” Mr Obama said, “We answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge – we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility – we embraced it. We did not fear our future – we shaped it.”
Henceforward, Mr Obama said, “In this country, neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams have worked a lifetime to achieve.”
He joined Ms Pelosi in portraying the vote not as a partisan victory, but as “a victory for the American people . . . a victory for common sense”.
The main casualty of the healthcare debate has been Mr Obama’s promise of a sort of “post-partisan” political Shangri-la. The healthcare Bill is the first piece of major social legislation in US history to have been passed without a single Republican vote.
But for most Americans, Mr Obama said, “This vote has never been about . . . the fight between right and left.” It was about not opening envelopes to see premiums have shot up, about stopping the despair of parents who could not insure chronically ill children, about small business owners who could not afford to insure their employees.
But the “fight between right and left” continued until the moment of the Bill’s passage, and is certain to reverberate through months to come. Late on Sunday evening, the House minority leader John Boehner told Democrats they were a “disgrace”. Republicans gave Boehner a standing ovation when he shouted at Democrats: “Shame on each and every one of you!”
Several thousand opponents of the Bill, many of them sympathisers of the Tea Party movement, crowded around the Capitol building, which at times they seemed on the verge of storming. Republican leaders made common cause with the protesters, going out onto the balcony to egg them on, and cheering two hecklers who shouted from the public gallery as they were removed by police.
Ms Pelosi had walked from her office under police protection, carrying the large gavel that was used to pass the Medicare (insurance for the elderly) Bill in 1965. “You communists! You socialists! You hate America!” demonstrators shouted at her and other Democratic leaders.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, the protesters sounded bells and horns. They sang, “We shall overcome” and harangued lawmakers through tannoys. “Nancy Pelosi, you will burn in hell for this,” a woman shouted. As representative Barney Frank noted, “There is an anger obviously that goes beyond anything connected to the Bill.” After representative Bart Stupak and his conservative Democrat allies announced they had been persuaded to vote for the Bill by Mr Obama’s promise of an executive order reiterating restrictions on federal funds being used for abortion, a Republican jeered: “Baby killer”.
In her emotional speech preceding the vote, Ms Pelosi paid tribute to Ted Kennedy. His son Patrick was the first to embrace her when the Bill was pronounced passed. By way of celebration, Ms Pelosi began autographing copies of the 2,400-page text, which Mr Obama will sign into law today.