Happy 49th Birthday to the Big O

President Obama may get a birthday present today as the pared-down jobs bill actually won a cloture vote and will be voted on. Harry Reid also threatened a cloture vote on the Elena Kagan nomination because Republicans were trying to round out the clock and postpone the vote until after the recess so that she would be unprepared for her first session at the Supreme Court in early fall. Stay classy.

So what has the Big O done in the last 18 months. Let's just keep it simple: the stimulus package; the total reform of the nation's healthcare system, something that has eluded every President since Theodore Roosevelt; the largest reform of our financial system since the Geeat Depression; picked two Supreme Court judges;ended the war in Iraq and reformulated the strategy in Afghanistan; negotiated a new START treaty; embarked on a global initiative to restrict nuclear materials;passed the Hate Crime Law and the Equal Pay for Equal Work; reformed the college loan program; and,oh I forgot, saved the entire American auto industry. And you can fill in the rest of the blanks. The list is truly astonishing. As Rachel Maddow said," He's accomplished more than anyone since the days when alcohol was illegal."

By December, we will hear from the Deficit Commission and will probably face a rancorous debate over immigration reform. But many of the real achievements are stealth. The stimulus contained the largest outlay for scientific research and development in American history and provided seed investment for alternative energy sources. From new solar technology to wind farms, these are small and inadequate investments into a future President Obama envisions but will meet enormous resistance. No one ever mentions that these investments are matched by 75% from private sources, a public-private partnership that may actually contribute to the common good.

But President Obama's singular failure so far is the lack of a comprehensive energy policy. Chris Hayes in the Nation writes his failure is the mortgage program. Others insist it's Afghanistan. Every President starting with Richard Nixon has warned of our addiction to oil and all have alerted the American public that we could not continue to consume so much oil and remain prosperous. The arguments have ranged from funding countries, who are anti-American, to negatively impacting the climate. President Obama made a promise at Copenhagen to cut gas house emissions significantly over a short period of time. Mandating the EPA regulate these emissions has been a significant act, but the situation has become a rapidly developing emergency.

The BP Gulf operation was Obama's compromise to bring more Republicans to support a comprehensive energy policy, which would channel more resources to a range of alternative, clean energy sources. Only a month prior to the explosion,there were miners' deaths in West Virginia and a slew of government investigations that determined that coal mines now were dangerously unsafe. This was also one of Obama's compromise--to support clean coal. The BP Gulf disaster was seen by some as an opportunity to address the nation and unveil a major energy initiative. From a political perspective, Obama had temporarily lost two of his playing cards to garner widespread support.

The sad fact of the matter is that climate change is a fait accompli, which we will have to live with. We are at the point of no return and the drone of propaganda from deniers has actually eroded the public's once large support for the notion climate change was man-made and dangerous to the environment. But simply from an energy supply issue,catastrophic disaster awaits us fairly soon. Mexico will import oil in 2015. Saudi Arabia has stopped developing new fields to save them for a future generation. And the Saudis have chronically lied about the size of their reserves for over a decade. The Iranian fields have been frozen because of antiquated drilling techniques that make them now impenetrable. BP was one of the first operations in the far energy frontier, where the last reserves exist. Even with success in exploring these reserves, the estimated oil represents only one year of our total consumption. The notion of peak oil in 2008 turns out to be right. And we can't avoid such environmentally hazardous areas if we are to continue our ruinous ways. But also they can only serve as the bridge to another future.

Remember health reform took place with the background of millions of Americans declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills and insurance rate hikes at 25-35% a year, throwing millions more off the insurance rolls. There was an urgency then, which we now forget. But there is an urgency now to make the transition to the full array of alternative energy sources. My fear is that the political situation is now so polarized and will remain so for the next two years that we will have to act in crisis and without the time needed to make such a transition smoothly--if we make it at all.

President Obama's economic policies will stabilize America's situation and I will bet he will also deal with the debt in a more rational manner than the Republicans. But to have a future where the standard of living isn't constantly eroding, America has to make its energy transition now, not latter.