Barack Obama's proposed stimulus spending has a chance to revive the swooning economy if the new president is willing to apply the money to the right initiative.

Obama is reportedly planning $850 billion or so in federal spending. But what kind of stimulus will it be?

To answer that question, the new president should listen first to Christina Romer, the nominee to lead his Council of Economic Advisers. As New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote recently, Romer and her husband, David, more than a decade ago studied modern-day recessions and found that the typical stimulus packages don't do much good.

That stands to reason. Politicos say the stimulus is needed for "infrastructure," which means that a building gets reinforced for earthquakes, a bridge gets fixed or a pothole gets filled. A couple of guys shovel asphalt into holes and -- voila! -- you've got infrastructure enhancement, and a couple of workers get paychecks.

But what next? The road hasn't become appreciably more valuable. Once the workers spend their pay and new potholes appear, we're back where we started.

Economic stimulus money should not be wasted on such zero-sum enterprises. It should be channeled to projects that will continue to stimulate the nation over the long haul, projects that when finished will produce real, sustained value for generations.

Here's what Obama should do: Embark on a massive drive to build more nuclear and natural gas power plants. In the campaign, John McCain called for 45 nuclear plants, which sounds like a good start.

Nuclear power plants provide good jobs, but that benefit pales by comparison to their larger importance. They provide clean, safe and virtually unlimited electricity for businesses, homes and even cars. More nuclear power would help to free America from dependence on other nations by, for example, eliminating oil-fired power plants and their corresponding pollution.

Energy independence has become more important than ever. In the long run, we must stop importing so much oil if we expect to climb out of our financial mess. America's current addiction to imports adds to the trade deficit, which leads to foreign borrowing, which triggers a tsunami of consumer borrowing and finally results in a replay of the financial meltdown that's hammering us now.

Inexplicably these days, some environmentalists will do everything possible to block the expansion of nuclear power and natural gas. They offer no realistic alternative, since their favorite ideas -- wind and solar -- are a long way from being commercially viable at large scale, and both result in far more visual blight than a compact nuclear power plant.

President Obama should use the powers of his office and his considerable political skill to get around the obstructionists and lead a nationwide effort to fast-track new power plants.

We need more natural gas plants, like the ones on the old Geneva Steel site and Currant Creek near Mona. Natural gas is abundant in the U.S. We have 118 years' worth at current production levels, and much more could be extracted. We need it both for generating electricity and for automobiles.

Natural gas is utterly nonpolluting, and it's a simple matter to convert an internal combustion engine, if only the Environmental Protection Agency would get out of the way. The agency is blocking natural gas conversion kits because EPA defines the change as a "modification of the emissions system" -- never mind that natural gas doesn't pollute.

Obama could break that bureaucratic barrier and get conversion kits moving into the market for all vehicles. The amount of oil saved and number of jobs created would be astonishing.

Finally, Obama's stimulus package should include plans for bolstering the nation's power grid. Building a high-voltage "backbone'' for the current crazy-quilt electrical system could reduce oil consumption 50 percent, according to Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute.

Utilities are already building interstate power lines and could put together the national grid without government payments, Huber said. Obama could help by pushing the federal government to authorize such lines.

All of the suggestions above are based on today's clean, proven technologies, not blue-sky wishes. Greater energy independence can be achieved, but only if the quibbling and anxiety of our era are laid aside.

That may seem impossible; boldness and vision are undercut at every turn. And that is why President Obama should look back to a time when our leaders really were bold and visionary.

About four months after John F. Kennedy's inauguration, the young president spoke to a joint session of Congress. On that day, May 25, 1961, he proclaimed a national goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth" before the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface.

In many ways that was a stunt compared to the genuine economic payback that could be achieved through rapid development of nuclear energy and natural gas.

Could we, in eight years, substantially solve our economic and energy crisis? What if by May 25 this year President Obama announced a "moon shot" that focused on real energy production and delivery, not tinkertoys like wind and solar? That kind of program would do far more than sprinkling some stimulus money around.

The effect of a short-term stimulus will be over and forgotten before Obama gets anywhere near re-election. On the other hand, a long-term plan to make America energy-independent and economically stable would reverberate through history and leave Obama with a genuine legacy.

All he has to do is look back a few years to see what Americans have done, and look ahead to what they may yet accomplish. Starting this week, we'll begin to discover whether he has the vision and guts to get the job done.