High speed rail has many things going for it. Public support, decades of proven success around the world, economic logic, environmental benefit, safety and benefit to travelers are just some of the many reasons why HSR makes so much sense for California.

But there are two things HSR absolutely needs to become reality: money and political leadership. In fact, political leadership is the most important of all – without it, the money won’t materialize, and in turn the project will wither.

We are in danger of watching HSR wither across America due to the lack of political leadership to get it funded and completed. The place where we need that leadership the most is in Washington, D.C. The person who most needs to provide that leadership is President Barack Obama.

President Obama has been an indispensable ally in the fight for high speed rail. On the campaign trail in 2008 Obama and Joe Biden made a consistent and strong case for HSR as part of America’s strategy for economic recovery, energy independence, action on the climate crisis, and weaning us off of oil.

Soon after he was inaugurated, Obama and his staff wowed us by including $8 billion in stimulus money for HSR. That $8 billion fired the imaginations of people across the country, and public demand for HSR soared. Two dozen states submitted $50 billion in applications for the stimulus funds, and California ultimately won just over a quarter of those funds, more than any other state.

Obama didn’t stop there. In April 2009 he announced a new HSR strategic plan, which recognized the need to invest significant new funds to build out a national HSR network. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters HSR will be Obama’s legacy.

One year later, things look a bit less rosy. Obama lost precious political time in the fight over health care reform, which took six months too long. As a result, Obama has kept pushing back other priorities, including the overdue reauthorization of the Transportation Bill that would include the promised and long-awaited permanent HSR funding source.

With that delay has come a potential stalling of HSR momentum. HSR opponents, convinced that the project is somehow unaffordable (when it reality it is the alternative – dependence on the present methods of travel – that is unaffordable), are now sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt about the ability of the project to win federal funds, a trap the State Auditor fell into a few weeks back. If the President were to sign into a law a long-term funding source for HSR, such as $50 billion over 6 years, the opposition to HSR would be put into disarray and many of the challenges we face in California would simply vanish.

Unfortunately, President Obama does not appear to be showing the same leadership in 2010 that he did in 2009. Congress is worried too, and wrote to President Obama imploring him to lead on this issue.

Others are concerned as well. Mark Reutter, writing for Progressive Fix last week, argued HSR could stall without a stronger push from the president:

Unless the White House acts forcefully and decisively to advance its transportation agenda in Congress, the president’s vision for high-speed rail may get sidetracked by the looming federal deficit….

Unlike the health care debate, President Obama has been conspicuously unengaged from the details of how to move his high-speed-rail (HSR) plan from a one-off award program using Recovery Act stimulus funds to a dedicated multi-year program akin to the scope and ambition of the Interstate Highway System….

Like any political vacuum in Washington, the absence of a strategy to pay for high-speed rail has emboldened critics of the program….

The need for administration leadership is clear. Lest he watch his vision dissolve in drift and delay, the president must make the case that a national program of rail construction will not only unsnarl our highways, but stimulate economic growth (with new jobs and emerging technologies) and protect our national security (by breaking our dependence on foreign oil). The time to start is now.

I share Reutter’s concerns. I’m sure he would agree that too much shouldn’t be made of those concerns – the HSR opponents will try to claim this is further evidence that momentum is turning against the project, but the reality is more complex. As oil prices have stalled (but began flirting with higher levels in the weeks before the euro debt crisis spooked the markets), HSR seems less urgent for the White House than the rest of their full plate, including financial regulation, immigration reform, and a challenging 2010 election cycle.

All hope is not lost, however. There is every reason to believe Obama meant what he said about HSR in 2008 and 2009. He understands its role in job creation, which matters – my sources indicate Obama is saying privately that his number one concern is long-term unemployment. HSR can provide a robust jobs creation program for the remainder of his term(s) in office.

On the other hand, there are forces conspiring against Obama’s efforts on HSR. More and more people are claiming that the federal deficit is a problem, a threat to future economic growth, despite the fact that leading economists argue “the danger posed by the deficit is zero”. At the same time, Obama’s support for bailing out the leading businesses of the old economy has made it more difficult to marshal political support in favor of investments for a new economy – particularly because such bailouts have signaled that the status quo can be defended at all costs.

President Obama faces a key moment in his presidency. Will he succumb to the folks who want to prevent innovation and change, who don’t care about the dire economic straits faced by millions of Americans, who don’t understand what “deflation” is and who are willing to risk a lost decade? Or will he plow ahead with his original instincts to remake the American economy into something more sustainable and prosperous, with federal investment to bring to America a proven transportation system heavily used and widely popular around the world?

Thankfully we don’t have to just sit back and wonder what the president will do. Go to FourBillion.com and send a message directly to the White House asking them to provide the leadership in support of increased federal funding for high speed rail.

We can’t afford to let this momentum stall out. California’s future depends on high speed rail.