Obama's victory lap

It was a Vince Lombardi moment.

For the press, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

For many months now, journalists have been kicking Barack Obama around over health-care reform. He bit off too much. He let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hijack the process. He could have made a deal with the Republicans. He spent too much time negotiating with the Republicans. He lost control of the message. He was too cool, too passive, too cerebral. He misread the public mood. He abandoned the public option. He alienated his own base. He lost the independents. He was pushing his party toward suicide. He screwed it up.

But after the House passed the thing by a three-vote margin Sunday night, the president was "going down in history" (New York Times), "won a signature achievement" (L.A. Times), "scored a stunning political and legislative victory" (Boston Globe) and "pulled off the most epic piece of social legislation since Lyndon B. Johnson got Medicare and Medicaid passed in 1965" (New York Daily News).

Keep in mind that the White House pushed this through both chambers without a single Republican vote, that the polls show a majority of Americans having turned against the bill, and that some of the wavering Democrats who voted for it were seen as signing their political death warrants. It didn't matter. It goes in the win column when Obama signs it Tuesday at 11:15 a.m.

News outlets, of course, mentioned all these caveats. And this is not meant to diminish the Herculean effort that Obama made, in an age of hyperpartisanship when Congress no longer seemed to pass big and controversial measures. Taking on the giant medical and insurance establishments was no easy task.

But it's amazing how the media were dumping on Rahm and Axelrod for messing up the first term, and yet the Obama gang was just one Stupak compromise away from being hailed as geniuses -- at least until the next setback.

Journalists will obviously stay on the political battlefield as the Senate grapples with reconciliation, state officials file lawsuits and the GOP tries to turn health care into a congressional majority in 2010.

But the real challenge for the media will be examining the law's actual impact on actual people, at least for those parts that take effect right away.

I suspect the law will prove more popular at first -- the tax hikes don't kick in till 2014 -- than it has during this endless debate. The bogeyman quality will be gone. To some extent, this has happened with gay marriage, where the reality, in the states that have adopted it, has cooled the opposition.

Of course, the real test for health-care reform will emerge over time: what happens to costs, who pays through the nose, how many uninsured are covered. And chronicling that, without the drama of a climactic vote, will be a real test for journalism as well.

"It's hard to overestimate the magnitude of President Barack Obama's historic victory on health care reform Sunday night -- but the win was a split decision for Democrats, not a knockout," says Politico.