Opinion: The Era of Big Government Is Back

(March 29) -- In the wake of President Barack Obama's signing of historic health care legislation, the natural inclination of most political pundits has been to speculate about the politics of reform -- namely who won and who lost.

Certainly, in the near-term it's possible that the hangover from reform -- coupled with an under-performing economy and high unemployment -- will bring victory to the GOP in November (though if recent polling is any indication, the Republicans may want to keep the champagne on ice).

But moments such as these don't fall easily into such simplistic paradigms; because while the Republicans may win the battle, it is surely President Obama and the Democrats who have won the war.

By finishing the unfinished business of the progressive experiment -- near-universal health care -- creating a new government entitlement and guaranteeing health security for tens of millions of Americans, the Democrats have scored a political victory that will likely resonate for generations.

At a time when American politics has become staggeringly dysfunctional and large national problems seemed practically unsolvable, the scope of the Democrats' accomplishment -- in crafting a massive piece of legislation that remakes one-sixth of the U.S. economy -- is breathtaking. (This in itself may go a long way toward restoring voter faith in government by demonstrating that political leaders can -- when they set their minds to it -- actually accomplish something for the American people).

Health care reform also ends a 40-year process of progressives' playing defense to conservatives' "government is the problem" mantra, or accepting incremental solutions to vast national challenges. During the '90s, for example, much of President Bill Clinton's domestic agenda was devoted to reversing Reaganomics rather than offering an activist agenda. Instead, he settled for a number of crucial, but smaller, legislative victories like Family and Medical Leave, welfare reform and expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

While each of these were important, none of them shifted the ideological ground like health care, which will directly and indirectly affect the lives of virtually every single American.

One can easily imagine that passage of health care legislation will embolden progressives to push even more aggressively for reform going forward.

By passing a bill that is based on the simple idea that only the federal government -- and not the free market -- can fix the inequalities in the health care system, Democrats have fundamentally changed the way that tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans interact with their government. Democrats have become the guarantor of health security for all Americans, a fact that future middle-class voters will no doubt be reminded of -- just as past Democrats spent much of the 20th century reminding voters that they were responsible for Social Security and other New Deal policies.

Republicans, on the other hand, having adopted a policy of pure obstructionism, now face a revitalized and united Democratic Party with the political chit of guaranteed health care they can wave at voters for generations to come. The best Republicans can do is hope that the health care bill fails; hardly an enviable position for a major political party.

To be sure, this doesn't mean that voters are going to stop complaining about high taxes, the government's supposedly profligate ways, or bureaucratic inefficiencies. But the electorate has long had a fractured relationship with its government; decrying its supposed excesses but at the same time opposing any efforts to cut those programs it likes. How else can one explain the oft-heard refrain in town halls this past summer of "Keep the government's hands off my Medicare." Many are the politicians who have succeeded in running against Washington; rarer though are the ones who have reaped benefits from actually shrinking the federal government.

In fact, for all the Sturm und Drang that surrounded the passage of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the general trajectory has been in the direction of greater, not less, acceptance over time. Health care reform is unlikely to be any different. Instead, decades from now subsidized health care and heavily regulated insurance companies will likely be as natural -- and unquestioned -- a part of the public landscape as Social Security, Medicare and public education are today.

While the impact of health care reform on the mid-term elections is unclear, that's really only a sideshow. In the century-long struggle between the two parties on the proper role of the federal government in the lives of the American people, Democrats can argue with some confidence that they have prevailed.