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With the U.S. Supreme Court accepting President Barack Obama's health care act, his hopes of joining the ranks of erstwhile presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan, who fundamentally altered the course of the country, seems to remain intact. The Supreme Court's decision not only preserves Obama's status as the president who did more to expand the nation's safety net than any since Johnson, but also preserves a bill intended to push back against rapidly rising income inequality. For a self-consciously historic figure, it allows Obama to argue that he has delivered on the most cherished goal of his 2008 campaign: "Change we can believe in." "Historians will compare this to F.D.R.'s Social Security and Lyndon Johnson's Medicare. This is another step in humanizing the American industrial system," the New York Times quoted historian Robert Dallek, who has written about both presidents, as saying. Beyond his legislative agenda, not just on health care, but on education and Wall Street regulation, Obama has sketched out a view of government as a force for good, a great leveler and a protector of the middle class, which stands in stark contrast to the Republican mantra, articulated by Reagan, who headed in the opposite direction in his first inaugural address by saying, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem", the paper said. For all its weight, however, the judgment does little to settle the bitter debate, spanning decades, over the proper role of government in American life, which rages on, with the next acid test only four months away, an election that will give voters the chance to render their verdict on Obama's ambitious legacy.

Health care ruling raises Obama's status in history