LBJ is Smiling

Finally after almost a year, crunch time came for the National Health Care Bill. President Obama bet the ranch, his presidency and his party on the calculation that hope never fails. Seized with the victory, the Democrats were able to formulate images of past liberal democratic dreams. These were the same dream FDR must have had when his administration tried to nationalize medicine.
I was not around to experience the FDR presidency but was thrown right into then middle of Lyndon Baines Johnson Great Society. President Johnson was a master when it came to getting his agenda through Congress. He steamrolled the Great Society to life while overcoming the threat of a killer filibuster from members of his own party. If we think passage of the health care bill was hard just think about getting voting rights for black Americans passed. The opposition to the civil rights bill was surly just as loud as the voices against health care but like LBJ, Obama spent months finding the means to assemble difficult alliances which would assure victory.
The notion of doing anything as large as either of these bills is 99.9% outside the Senate's nature. Personally I think the House of Representatives is the best branch of government and always place my bets with the House rather than the Senate although this time I should have doubled down on the President.
The ideal that Obama should be compared to LBJ is really for the historians but we are starting to see smiles in that comparison today. LBJ's Great Society is a distant past but it changed America forever. President Obama's health care reform, immigration reform and financial reform could do the same.