Call it the backlash against the backlash: after heaping wild hopes on president-elect Obama, and then turning around and professing in a disenchanted manner that he’ll invariably disappoint us, we’re now back to piling on the starry-eyed expectations.

That said, here at Listicles we prefer unreasonable expectations to presumed disappointment, in which spirit we pass along this wonderfully ambitious set of goals tabulated by Mark Green for The Huffington Post from the Center for American Progress Action Fund: 10 Goals for Obama’s First Term.

1. Reduce poverty a third by 2016. With poverty increasing by five million in the Bush years - and with only Great Britain having less upward income mobility than the U.S - the country needs to reduce the 37 million indigent (nearly equal to the State of California) by a third by 2016.

2. Enhance Democracy to stop special interest vetoes. Pro-democracy reforms often take a back seat - in campaigns and governance - to bread-and-butter, life-and-death issues such as economy, war and health. But process is policy, especially if a flawed democracy allows big commercial interests in the legislative and administrative arenas to stymie change.

3. Get economic growth rates back to at least 3% of the Kennedy and Clinton years. The world now understands how Bush’s tax cutting, deregulation, laissez faire approach has led to slow growth, no growth or near economic collapse. From Enron to e Coli Bacteria to imported Chinese toys and drugs to the subprime mortgage criss, it turns out that laissez wasn’t fair.

4. Move to a clean, green low-carbon economy. With a scientific unanimity that an increase of even 2˚ C above pre-industrial levels would be a global disaster, it’s surely inadequate for a country with 3 percent of human oil reserves using 25 percent of all energy to focus on drilling and production. Yet while man-made global warming was burning the planet in the past eight years, two oil men in the White House simply fiddled away.

5. Reduce the costs - and expand the coverage - of health care. Over 70 million Americans are either uninsured or under-insured, leading to more illness, death and overtaxed emergency rooms. We have both the most expensive and least effective health care system in the industrialized world.

6. Elevate science over politics in federal decision-making. While most presidents will weigh facts which lead to conclusions, Bush deployed the reverse methodology of “Lysenkoism” - conclusions led to “facts.” Repeatedly, political appointees from affected industries ignored data because of partisan or religious concerns, especially in the area of climate change.

7. Restore the rule of law and human rights as American values. Constitutional scholar David Cole, challenging friends to name constitutional rights that Bush-Cheney didn’t try to sabotage, concluded, “After the right to bear arms and not quarter soldiers, the game will be over.” Apparently, when W swore to “faithfully execute the laws,” he took it literally.

8. Educate children better for the global economy. In an increasingly global economy based on information - and with production techniques duplicatable anywhere - education is the new gold. Unless our children are better educated and more innovative, they and we will lose out in a world of open trade.

9. Fight terrorism by working more cooperatively with allies. Terrorism by non-state actors is a palpable threat to American interests that cannot be diminished merely by invading countries or overreacting with apocalyptic, belligerent language. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have grown since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

10. Reduce nuclear proliferation. Because the greatest threat to America - economic threat and national security threat - is the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, a top priority for President Obama is to reduce that risk and to announce the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Read the listicle in full detail at The Huffington Post.