Yes, these are the sounds of change
In just two weeks, the country has shifted. It still hasn’t shifted enough, but it has shifted in ways that were unimaginable when President Obama took office.
For the second time, a Supreme Court with a Republican-appointed majority upheld the Affordable Care Act. After what Obama called “decades of trying” to change a system that covered too few, cost too much and failed too often, the United States has its first major health care reform since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid a half-century ago. Obama campaigned on reform in 2008, calling it an economic issue as much as a health care issue.
A supposedly dysfunctional Washington also passed the nation’s first major trade program in two decades. Obama can begin fast-track negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership because a Democratic president and congressional Republicans cooperated to overcome opposition from within their own parties. Obama has tried throughout his presidency to shift America’s focus to Asia, even as the Middle East keeps pulling us back.
A massacre in South Carolina so shocked the country’s collective sensibility that the state’s governor called for removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds. Like other Deep South states, South Carolina revived the flag during the civil rights movement as a symbol of defiance on race. Defenders call the flag Southern heritage. By posing with it before he allegedly murdered nine African-Americans in their church, Dylann Storm Roof affirmed that the flag is about racism, not heritage.
And, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court — however narrowly — ruled that in a nation founded on rights, states cannot deny rights to people just because of whom they love. The decision came two years after the court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In 2008, when 51 percent of Florida voters gave the state to Obama, 62 percent of them banned samesex marriage. By April 2014, a poll found that 56 percent of Floridians opposed the ban. A month ago, support for same-sex marriage nationwide hit a record 60 percent.
These developments have been swift. However jolting to some, they are disruption with a sound purpose. To quote the abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”
These shifts also are likely to last. Republicans calling for repeal of the health care law are just tossing chum to primary voters. Too much of the country will be invested in the law by 2017, even if a Republican wins. States will have the option starting that year of applying for waivers to achieve the law’s goals using their own approaches. That’s a better option for Florida than continued resistance.
Backing down from repeal also would allow Republicans in Congress to help change a law that will need many changes. Still, medical costs that declined during the recession because of lower demand have continued to decline since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal health care consumption rose 0.61 percent in 2014, the lowest rate in more than 50 years.
If health care reform eluded action for so long, so did raising the country’s economic presence in the Pacific Rim. During the last decade, as the U.S. wasted time and money on tax cuts and a needless war, China cut deals with governments around the world. The new trade deal seeks to exploit our greatest export: intellectual property, which the Chinese regularly steal. It also seeks to create more demand for American goods.
All presidents try to bring change. At other times, though, they must respond to it, especially to social change. Obama waited on same-sex marriage, and then acted. As the first African-American president, Obama has frustrated some supporters with his seeming reluctance to take on the issue forcefully. The reality is that a black man who came off as angry could not have gotten elected.
With the murders in Charleston, though, Obama has used the voice he might have been muting — even if that meant using the N-word. Getting the nation to confront racism is a challenge. So is securing even mild legislation to confront our gun violence. If the Confederate flags can come down, however, anything is possible.
In February 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.” Washington has beaten back that change too many times — immigration reform, a market-based cap-and-trade plan to reduce greenhouse gases — but Obama suddenly is both leading and riding big changes. The roar of those many waters is loud. It also is exhilarating.