ONE SURPRISED DUDE!

By Edwin Cooney

Yep, that’s me!  I was more than pleasantly surprised -- I was both shocked and thrilled that the Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare” last Thursday, June 28^th, 2012.

I’m not alone, of course. Even today, four days later, pundits, politicians and voters with far more knowledge or sophistication than myself are still either reeling or dancing from the shock of the court’s decision.

Some are asserting that the decision is the most significant Supreme Court ruling since Bush vs. Gore, a decision many still believe turned the 2000 presidential election around.  I’m told that many Republicans and Tea Party types are declaring it the most disastrous decision since Dred Scott which ruled in 1857 that blacks were property not citizens.

Most expected that if the vote went against the plaintiff (the ideologically and financially conservative among us), Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy would deliver that vote based on the liberal view of the commerce clause of the constitution.  Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the fee which will be charged to those who refused the law’s mandate to purchase insurance is in reality a tax and that is what won the day for Obamacare.  For as much as most Americans resent taxes, the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution authorizes Congress to “lay and collect taxes from whatever income source derived.”  Hence, even the most hated taxes are legal!

Okay, it’s confession time.  A few months after Obamacare was passed, I was visiting a home in Springfield, Missouri and the man of the house was opining against Obamacare as the president’s violation of his 2008 promise not to raise taxes on the income of citizens who make $250,000 or less.  Insisting, as the White House did, that the charge to those who refused to purchase insurance under Obamacare wasn’t a tax but a reasonable fee (since those who did purchase insurance wouldn’t have to pay it), I cheerfully denied that the president had broken his promise not to raise taxes on most Americans.  I didn’t carry the argument too far as I was a guest in his home and matters of a personal nature were far more important to me.  However, since arguments before the justices began in March, I’ve been hoping that if it were necessary to preserve the law by calling the charge a tax, then please God let it be called a tax!

The president did take a 7 to 2 drubbing on another aspect of Obamacare concerning Medicare funding.  In short, the federal government may not force states to accept Obamacare or otherwise lose Medicare funding.  Still, Thursday’s ruling was undoubtedly good for the president politically and perhaps, even more significantly, from the standpoint of his legacy.

Even if Obamacare has to be amended to increase its effectiveness, it will go down in history as a major presidential achievement.  Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton sought to get some form of national healthcare legislation passed without success. 

If you ask me, Barack Obama has increased his ranking in history among our presidents via the Supreme Court’s validation of Obamacare.  Presidents are usually considered good, or even great, if they achieve one piece of “landmark” or significant legislation and Obamacare has, as of last Thursday, achieved that ranking.  Obamacare now ranks right up there with Reagan’s tax indexing, LBJ’s Medicare and civil rights achievements, Ike’s interstate highway system, Truman’s desegregation of the Military and a whole string of FDR’s anti-Depression reforms.

Even more, coupled with the president’s successful mission against Osama Bin Laden which was a landmark foreign affairs achievement, Barack Obama will have left a significant mark on America’s standing both at home and abroad even if he is defeated in November.

Almost as intriguing as the decision itself were two observations in Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion.  First, he wrote that the decision wasn’t an endorsement of the wisdom of the law, but rather reflected the court's reticence to invalidate the acts of the nation’s elected leaders.  Even more interesting was his observation: “It isn’t our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” 

These observations might be seen by some Conservatives as reflecting the Chief Justices’s personal sympathy for their opposition to Obamacare . However, most Conservatives would have gladly regarded the court’s rejection of Obamacare as a much, much wiser decision.  Just like some houseguests, Conservatives also like to have things both ways when it suits them!

There’s little doubt that opponents of Obamacare believe deep in their souls that the Supreme Court last Thursday was guilty of a terrible injustice.  Yet many assert that the Supreme Court, populated as it is by nine personages called “justices,” is not a court of justice, but a court of law.  Laws, as everyone knows, reflect, but never govern, morality or immorality.

Law may be the legitimate business of our elected leadership, but morality is ultimately the people’s business!

One thing more. Now that Obamacare has been legally validated, the GOP is making national healthcare reform a party priority for the first time in its history.  If nothing else, the idea that the GOP considers any healthcare reform important leaves me one surprised dude indeed!

Lead on, Mr. President -- lead on!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY