Those initiatives you describe require the funding or the legislation of Congress. To get the initiatives you imagine, you would need a significant progressive bloc of Democrats to be elected. Otherwise, you'd have a repeat of 2006: Democrats getting in office and smothering the voters' will.

And what about Washington? Elections are just one day out of a four-year term. The law brokerage service that is our system of government goes back to its job, selling legislation to interested buyers -- lobbyists, PACs, the military-industrial-congressional complex. This is a 24/7/365 job.

These buyers follow legislation and contribute money to the system for the rest of the office terms. They also contribute money to both parties, allowing them to hedge their votes, something the average voter cannot do. Plus, these buyers can shape-shift and adapt to any threat to their influence and manage to protect their privileges.

Obama knows this, and he didn't get this far by becoming a threat to the system. In fact, the system loves a guy like him, since people are so enamored by his personality that they are forgetting they'll get the candidate and be happy with just that.

Executives in our republic have the power to appoint the people who run our government. George Bush's appointees have come from a pool of political buddies, and many of them were poorly equipped to deal with running a large bureaucracy. Worse, some of them actively politicized their nonpartisan offices.

Those who surround Obama, and those he would appoint the various positions in our government, are much more likely to be interested in seeing our government run honestly, and in a nonpartisan way.

That will have a big, positive, impact in our country. Imagine if the fleet managers of various federal departments decided that no government car would get mileage below 50 mpg, or that every federal building would be LEED certified. Or imagine if the Department of Justice pursued cases against those who have bankrupted our financial system, instead going after political opponents of the current administration. Imagine an EPA that granted California the power to limit CO2 emissions the first time it asked, and helped other states do something similar

Obama doesn't need the powers of the unitary executive - as president he's got plenty of power to change things. Writing new laws and securing the money from congress to see new programs implemented is the job of the legislature - so it is always difficult for the executive to push an agenda on them (it is designed to be so).

With the power of his office, many positive changes can take place without congress having to do a thing.

Whether he can make them law is a whole other matter. Do both chambers of Congress share his position? Considering the gravitational pull of the status quo, and how little turnover there is in seats and changes of party control, Obama will see little of his agenda implemented.

I seriously doubt a President Obama is going to use the newly created powers of the unitary executive inherited from Bush the Lesser in the public interest.

Countries like Brazil have almost completely pushed aside their dependency on foreign oil as they use high energy crops to create ethanol. Crops like sugar cane used in Brazil and switch grass which is proposed in the US provide 8-10 times as much ethanol. Switch grass can grow in any number of climates on virtually any fertile terrain.

Some parts of Obama's policies have holes, but they are much more sound than McCains which continues to ignore the fact that oil is a finite resource.