That was the pull quote from the President’s message a little after midnight, after the House passed the health care reform bill. This business isn’t quite over yet; the Senate has to pass another piece of fix-it legislation, though (knock on whatever hard surface you have on hand) it doesn’t appear there’ll be a serious problem there.

Anyway, to the House Democrats, “Good Job!”

That said, the President’s message also included this bit: “This day is not the end of this journey. Much hard work remains, and we have a solemn responsibility to do it right.” That ought to be the pull quote. This bill, while really pretty good, isn’t perfect, and there’s a lot more work to be done before Americans have a health care system they can be truly proud of (at least where the set “Americans” includes somebody other than “Heath Insurance Executives”). Hopefully we won’t wait another fifteen years before touching this issue again, and work on getting all the tinkering and adjusting that’ll be necessary once these provisions start taking effect.

Despite the fact that it was closer than I would have liked, I enjoyed watching the leadership whipping the caucus into the “yes” column; that’s the real-life American experience; there’s voting, but nobody gets kicked out of the house or off the island. I wish more people paid attention to that. The system of stroking egos and getting the ducks queued up is very interesting to me (and not just Sorkin and Schlamme, as evidenced by the early seasons of The West Wing); and even though I’m never thrilled when a couple of whiny-pants representatives <cough>KucinichStupak </cough> throw temper tantrums until they get a chance to jump in front of the cameras and pretend to be heroes (more shades of reality TV there, urk), I recognize that sometimes, that’s the way things get done in Washington, and I can live with that.

Because once there’s an executive signature on this thing, a whole bunch of people will be better off than they were before, and that’s really what matters.