Opinion An incomplete triumph

For all its weight,however,the judgment does little to settle the bitter debate,spanning decades,over the proper role of government in American life. That debate rages on,with the next acid test only four months away — an election that will give voters the chance to render their verdict on Obama’s ambitious legacy.

What the Supreme Court’s decision does do is preserve Obama’s status as the president who did more to expand the nation’s safety net than any since Johnson. It preserves a bill intended to push back against rapidly rising income inequality. And for a self-consciously historic figure,it allows Obama to argue that he has delivered on the most cherished goal of his 2008 campaign: “Change we can believe in.” In political terms,said Douglas G. Brinkley,a professor of history at Rice University,“It’s the cornerstone of what could turn out to be one of the most extraordinary two-term presidencies in American history.”

Beyond his legislative agenda — not just on healthcare,but on education and Wall Street regulation — Obama has sketched out a view of government as a force for good,a great leveller and a protector of the middle class. That view stands in stark contrast to the Republican mantra,articulated by Reagan,who headed in the opposite direction in his first inaugural address,saying that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Republicans,including the president’s challenger,Mitt Romney,have largely hewed to the Reagan script in the decades since,and have met with considerable success doing so. But Obama has constructed his political career on the notion that Americans are ready for something different after three decades of rising inequality and slow-growing incomes for the middle class. While still a candidate in 2008,Obama declared that Reagan changed history more than either Bill Clinton or Richard M. Nixon. The planets,he said,were once again aligned to make a transformative presidency possible.

Healthcare has been Exhibit A in that argument,a project he undertook at the cost of other ambitious efforts like curbing climate change or rewriting the tax code. While Obama will be remembered for bailing out the auto industry,winding down two wars and dispatching Osama bin Laden,healthcare was his play for history.

Not just Roosevelt and Johnson,but Harry S. Truman,Nixon and Clinton all tried and failed to move the country toward universal health coverage. Obama and the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill succeeded,passing a bill that,through an expansion of private and government insurance,seeks to end the status of the US as the world’s only rich country with millions of involuntarily uninsured citizens.

In addition to broadening the safety net,the law also seeks to alter a tax structure largely created by Reagan. To pay for the expanded insurance,Obama and Congress raised Medicare taxes on high-income households,as well as on medical companies.

Had the justices struck down the law,they would have dealt Obama a crippling blow in the midst of a hard-fought campaign. Knocking down the central pillar of his legislative agenda would have called into question not only his judgment,but his very legitimacy,according to the presidential scholar Michael Beschloss.

If Obama and his opponents can agree on one thing,it may be that he is trying to move the country away from a laissez-faire period. The rise of the Tea Party movement and the Republican takeover of the House were a backlash against what his opponents saw as an arrogant overreach by the president. The fact that he did it while the country was mired in a recession,and without a single Republican vote,compounded the outrage. Obama may have misjudged the readiness of the country to accept an expansion of the government after decades in which Reagan’s conservative credo had come to be embraced.

Historians liken Obama’s challenge to Roosevelt’s,who had parts of his New Deal struck down in his first term. The lesson for this president,said David M. Kennedy,a historian at Stanford,is to forge a coalition robust enough to change the political landscape. Roosevelt was elected to a second term in a landslide in 1936,cementing the New Deal.

Even if Obama is re-elected,he could face further legal challenges to the healthcare law from the states. Changes in the nation’s political landscape could render this week’s ruling less definitive than it now appears. But the Supreme Court has given the president crucial standing to make his case.