President Obama and transformational leadership: an analysis of the passage of the healthcare legislation in the house of representatives

Purpose On the night of March 21, 2010 the House of Representatives passed the historic healthcare bill, which President Barack Obama called, “A victory for the American people.” The House passed HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) by a vote of 219–212. The paper uses logistic regression to analyze the impact of different variables on the passage of the healthcare reforms. The paper explores the passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act from the point of transformational leadership of President Obama. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses logistic regression to analyze the impact of different variables on the passage of the healthcare reforms. Findings The paper shows that President Obama's election victory has a significant influence on the passage of the healthcare bill. The results of logistic regression show that party and ideology are important variables influencing positive votes for healthcare policy. Originality/value The paper analyzes Obama as a transformational leader, and it uses his election victory margin as a measure of his influence in the passage of the healthcare legislation.