Until the number “216” appeared on the screen last night, I wasn’t totally convinced it was going to happen. The fifteen minutes of voting were winding down and the tally was growing more slowly than I’d expected and I wondered if some Democrats were going to change their minds at the last minute.

But it really happened. Holy shit.

The Democrats have passed health care reform.

They did it!

If you had told me two months ago, after Scott Brown’s election and the Democratic disarray that followed, that we’d actually get here, I don’t think I would have believed it. I was depressed about politics and I was so sure that the wimpy Democrats would cave in like they usually did.

The turning point, I think, happened just ten days after Scott Brown’s election, when Obama met with Republicans in Baltimore and the session was televised live at the White House’s request. It was a great psychological boost for the Democrats — it was bold, it was different, and it showed that the Republicans in Congress were intellectually bankrupt and that Obama was not cowed. It was a prelude to the bipartisan session at Blair House a month later, where Obama was able to say to the Republicans: Look, many of the things in this bill are ideas that your party supported 15 years ago. You don’t want single-payer? There’s no single-payer. You don’t want a public option? There’s no public option. I’m willing to work with you, but you’re not willing to work with me. His performance gave congressional Democrats the leadership that Nancy Pelosi had insisted upon.

One of the things I admire most in Barack Obama is his capacity to learn from mistakes. He exercised poor leadership on health care last summer and fall, letting the debate go to Crazytown, and it cost him; had he taken greater charge of the debate, this health care bill might have had a public option, which will now have to wait for a future date. But he exercised much stronger leadership in the last two months, when everyone thought health care reform was dead. You could say it’s a wash: had he been a stronger leader back then, he wouldn’t have had to work so hard to save the plan. Would things have been different under Hillary Clinton, who said that we couldn’t afford to have a president who needed to learn on the job? Maybe, maybe not. But I’m so gratified to have a president who does know how to learn, a president who has flexibility and tenacity in equal measure. I’d rather have a president who learns on the job than one who thinks there’s nothing worth learning.

And Nancy Pelosi deserves great credit, too. I watched her closing speech last night and, to be honest, it was pretty dreadful. The Speaker is, ironically, not a very good speaker. But she’s apparently great behind the scenes, because she managed to hold a majority together with a few votes to spare.

As for the silly executive order that won over Bart Stupak and his caucus — an executive order that basically says that the law is the law — it seems like something out of The West Wing. I could just see Toby and Josh and Sam arguing with each other about how to win over the votes of these intransigent House members, and then Donna walks in and says something seemingly unrelated, and then a light bulb slowly goes on above Josh’s head as the camera closes in on him.

This really has been the stuff of high drama. But it’s not just about politics. This bill is going to do a great deal of good for millions of people. It’s the most significant social legislation Congress has passed in decades.

Obama just became a consequential president.