The failure of Republicans to ruin Obamacare is a testament to American greatness: The Affordable Care Act was so well designed — in principle and, to a considerable extent, in practice — that it’s pretty much impossible to kill.

Despite incessant rhetorical attacks and efforts at sabotage, Obamacare has taken hold in many states, including Maryland. A lot of Americans see its benefits and its service to the greater good. We hated what congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump tried to do to it, and probably hated even more the spiteful proposal to repeal the health insurance law now and replace it later.

In fact, a bipartisan group of governors, including Maryland’s Larry Hogan, a Republican, immediately came out in opposition. According to polls, most Americans think that Obamacare should be repaired, not repealed.

That’s because most Americans have moved past adolescence. Most of us are rational. Most of us possess some common sense.

However partisan our politics, most of us think the United States should move forward.

His supporters might have heard in Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” a call to return the country to a time when the population and culture were less diverse, when factory and coal mining jobs were plentiful, when men had crewcuts and only women in freak shows wore tattoos. Trump loyalists have some vague idea about what would make America great — a decisive victory in a war, or perhaps the return of smokestacks to the urban horizon, or the deportation of Muslims.

But most Americans, I believe, have very different ideas about what would make the country great in the 21st century.

Pardon me while I express some high ideals. I’ll start with health care.

We talked about it for decades and never did anything about the country’s uninsured, until Obamacare. You don’t have to love the law to see the principles at work — regulated insurance markets; policies with essential elements at their core; an all-in approach, with the individual mandate to get insured; an end to discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Until Obamacare, those of us who had insurance were paying for the millions who didn’t. No one wants to go back to the bad old days.

Obamacare is far from perfect, but, as a first step toward national health insurance, it’s about as good a compromise as you could get in a capitalist democracy. If it doesn’t already, the politics of repeal will someday look foolish to a majority of Americans. Obamacare might have had a run of unpopularity, but it was never as widely reviled as the now-collapsed Republican plan to replace it.

Melissa Deckman, chair of political science at Washington College, pointed out the other day that Trump’s effort at repeal has likely made Obamacare more popular. So if we recalibrate what makes America great, then affordable health insurance and medical care for all would be high on the gauge.

So would education. I realize that a recent Pew poll found that nearly 60 percent of Republicans believe colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the country, but I think that has more to do with ideological concerns (political correctness, liberalism on campuses) than practical ones. Most Republicans would want the doctors and nurses who treat them to have received the finest medical education possible. Same with the engineers who design the bridges they drive over, or the designers of the software that keep their businesses running efficiently.

If conservatives value personal responsibility, as they often say they do, then they would want their children and grandchildren to adapt to the changing economy and job market by getting the best education possible.

I hear the strain of anti-intellectualism to which Trump has given voice — “I love the poorly educated,” he said during the campaign — but I doubt most Americans are willing to surrender in the global struggle for excellence in the classroom. Nor in the development and support of the creative class. Nor in the training of fine mechanics and masons.

Nor in research and development.

What would make America great? It’s not just military might anymore; too many still see that as the primary gauge. Developing alternative energy sources, dealing with climate change as if our lives and the lives of our descendants depended upon it — that would make America great.

Taking on cancer. Here in Baltimore, we have the Johns Hopkins medical institutions, where it seems like every week some brilliant researcher advances our understanding of how deadly cancer cells grow and spread, or some other promising discovery.

We should measure this nation by how well we treat our neediest and our children, and then by how much we celebrate and support the most creative and innovative among us, particularly those in service to the greater good, to improving life on Earth.

drodricks@baltsun.com