Barack Obama may turn out to be a great disappointment

I've just listened to part of a speech he made, and noted two promises.

He said that in the next two years he'd double the output of energy from alternative sources. He also promised to computerise all American medical records.

Alternative energy is both very fashionable and relatively new, so the annual rate of increase is a high proportion of the total. Output might well double in two years without any intervention from the president elect. Furthermore it takes quite a while to build and commission new generating equipment, so it is unlikely that anything Obama does do will have much effect in the next two years. The promise about energy is empty.

The promise about medical records should worry all Americans. There have been attempts to computerise all medical records in England too. The cost has been enormous, but the system still doesn't work properly. Obama sounded a bit like Harold Wilson promising in the 1960's to harness the 'white heat of the technological revolution' for the public good. Has he an ulterior motive for building a central database of information about the entire population ?