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“REALITY HAS A WAY
OF ASSERTING ITSELF.”
It sat in legislative purgatory for 11 years until Obama went ahead
with executive action. The idea that such a policy would be safe under President Trump – who lit a fire in so many of his supporters
with his campaign promises to deport millions of illegal immigrants
– would be laughable if we weren’t talking about breaking up of
thousands of families.
In light of this, an article on Obama’s legacy feels like a terribly depressing assignment. That dot on the horizon, all the future fond remembrances of the changes that Obama made, is now being threatened by a rising tide of fear and hatred in America.
But maybe that’s unfair. Maybe to suggest that an orange real estate
mogul with zero political experience could walk into the Oval Office
and shake the Etch A Sketch clean of all of Obama’s accomplishments is me getting a little ahead of myself. “Reality has a way of
asserting itself,” the president said in a news conference days after his
first meeting with Trump. After all, it’s too soon for Obama to forget
how hard he fought for much of what was accomplished. He knows
no matter the gaping political divides in America today, and no matter the resentment that led to Trump’s win, it would be harder for his
successor to take away what he, Obama, had won for so many people
than it was for him to convince the country it would be worth it.
I.
THE FIGHT FOR OBAMACARE
Earlier this year, when The New York Times Magazine asked 53
historians what Obama’s greatest accomplishment was, Obamacare
topped the list. “It’s an achievement that will put Obama in the ranks
of FDR (Social Security) and LBJ (Medicare) because of its enduring
impact on the average American’s well-being,” wrote Thomas Holt
of the University of Chicago. “He won’t need bridges and airports
named after him since opponents already did him the favour of naming it ‘Obamacare.’”
It seems impossible that a piece of legislation that has so far provided
almost 20 million Americans with health insurance could be so polarizing. In 2012, two years after the bill was passed, a Reuters-Ipsos poll
found that just 14% of Republicans supported the law, with many
fearing it would disrupt existing health plans, send premiums soaring and add to the country’s $500-billion deficit. Slowly,
Obama’s administration claimed the term “Obamacare” from those trying to discredit him, but it still has
a charged meaning. A CNBC poll from 2013 found
that 46% of the public was opposed to Obamacare
but only 37% were opposed to the Affordable Care
Act. They are, of course, the same thing.
The bill – whatever you choose to call it – was never
perfect. The price of premiums on mid-level plans is
expected to rise a whopping 25% next year, which
will be a deterrent for desperately needed enrollees. Insurers are now beginning to pull out of
certain states, recognizing that a lack of enrollees could create instability in the market.
The price hike can be explained by looking
at the types of people who are signing
up. Because the bill prohibited insurers
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from turning away those with a preexisting condition, all of sickest
people signed up first. Problem was, not enough healthy people did.
Obama had every reason to believe that would not happen. The initial
prices of premiums were low enough that most healthy people without
coverage should have bought in. Even after the price hike, patients aren’t
likely paying much out-of-pocket. The government subsidizes the cost.
Predictably, the pushback has been furious and now that Republicans
will take control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the
Oval Office, the program’s future is in serious jeopardy. Opponents
of the law have unsuccessfully voted to repeal it over 60 times and
many now assume that Trump will succeed where they have failed
(though it’s not clear what, if anything, he’ll replace it with). But even
if it were to be repealed tomorrow, the fact that Obama managed
this reform does matter. If you accept – as us Canadians do – that
healthcare is a human right, then he personally paid an unre asonably
high political price to win it for those who couldn’t afford it.
II.
REWRITING THE
WASHINGTON PLAYBOOK
If you watch Obama on talk shows or when he hangs out with what
I imagine are regular people during those painfully stilted photoops, one of the first things you notice is how cool he is. He’s almost universally recognized as funny and he seems just as laid back
handing out candy to tiny superheroes at the White House’s annual
Halloween party as he is when he’s rubbing shoulders with senators
and congressmen.
This public persona contains traces of another popular trope that’s
often referenced in political circles: that of the “Spockian” Obama,
the unflappable, methodical and confident leader. These characteristics seem to have played an important role in his dealings with hostile
foreign powers.
One of the defining moments of Obama’s presidency was his famous
“line in the sand,” his promise that if Syrian President Bashar alAssad used chemical weapons against his own people, the American
military would be forced to intervene. In 2013, Assad did and with
America’s reputation as a superpower at stake, many members
of Obama’s inner circle were pushing for a decisive show of
force. Despite this, the president broke his promise.
In “The Obama Doctrine,” the 20,000-word cover story
that ran in the April issue of the Atlantic, Editor-inChief Jeffrey Goldberg went to great pains to diagnose
the president’s decision. It's clear that he agonized over
it for some time but ultimately he found that American intervention would have costs that hadn’t been carefully considered: that Assad might place civilians as human
shields around obvious targets, or that strike might send
plumes of poison gas drifting uncontrollably towards innocent
people. There was also the question of what would happen
after the strike. Would America be committed to further intervention? Was such a course in anyone’s best interest? Obama’s
choice played out as a radical departure from the Bush years,
which saw America mired in several Middle-Eastern conflicts.
LIFE&STYLE //