I can't speak for Obama but there's tonnes of ways to reduce oil consumption that do not necessarily involve nuclear power; you'd have to carefully sift through this mess to determine what might be cost-effective.
Solar space heating/hot water is quite affordable(no expensive silicon, just an array of evacuated glass tubes containing blackened/anodized inner tubes through which water can flow) and it can directly displace natural gas and oil.
Insulation and counter-current heat exchangers can directly reduce the amount of energy(oil, gas or otherwise) used in HVAC(if a home is made airtight and all ventilation goes through a counter-current heat exchanger you can recover over 90% of the energy loss from ventilation).
Electrified rail can directly replace oil used in diesel locomotives. Trains can directly replace trucks for transporting goods. Smaller cars can directly replace most big cars(check the price of SUVs; it's already happening on account of the recent high in oil price and price volatility/supply concerns. One way to ensure that it continues might be to put a price floor on oil and buy every barrel of oil below that, putting it into expanding the strategic reserve or puting an onerous tax on oil-based fuels like Europe).
To the extent that domestic natural gas production can be expanded or natural gas can be saved from other uses natural gas or natural gas derivatives(e.g. dimethylether, an excellent low-particulate, high efficiency diesel replacement. See Gas To Liquids, GTL) can be used for motor vehicles.
Biogas from anaerobic fermentation of crop wastes and manure can be used to expand the natural gas supply a little bit without puting much pressure on soil carbon(might not be worth transporting this gas off of the farm if it's not connected to a natural gas grid, but you can displace other fossil fuels used for drying corn, use it as an automotive fuel for farm equipment or put it through a small gas turbine and generate electricity so you don't have to pay the higher price of electricity during peak times or export electricity to the grid produce ammonia/urea locally if haber-bosch can be cost effectively scaled down etc.).
You can use black liquor from the paper industry to produce small amounts of DME or other valuable liquid fuels through gasification.
You can try to develop GM-plants that are specifically made more vulnerable to attack(e.g. produce enzymes required to break themselves down) such that the cellulose can be separated from lignin and turned into glucose for yeast or bacteria; you can try to develop higher yield yeast or bacteria that produce butanol instead of ethanol(butanol naturally floats to the surface at some concentration, requiring no distillation; less corrosive than ethanol. 15% gasoline + 85% butanol can be used in unmodified gasoline engines).
You can gamble some money on developing cheaper/better battery and high energy density ultra-capacitor technology(even if you're just going to use it with an ICE in a hybrid, the fact that you can run an engine/micro-turbine at it's peak efficiency with just enough power to coast at high-way speeds and use the battery to provide the oomphh for fast acceleration instead of having a hugely oversized ICE saves you a lot of gas; as does having ultra capacitors can easily recover most of breaking energy).
You can use a SOFC to recover energy and clean up VOCs(e.g. paint fumes at an auto-factory that you may not be allowed to just emit to the atmosphere).
You can try to develop a "smart-grid"(which would try to turn the electrical grid into more of a fully connected graph that can shuffle electricity from anywhere to anywhere to better soak up intermitent generation) with "smart appliances"(such as a freezer with embedded eutectic or phase change material that can defer electricity consumption to cheaper off-peak electricity and provide the electrical companies with the abillity to switch off your freezer or air conditioning for a few hours(at their expense) to deal with an emergency drop in generation until replacement sources come online).
You can gamble some money on trying to develop metallic carbon nanotube quantum-wires into a potentially cheaper replacement for aluminium and copper in electrical motors, in HVDC distribution systems(quantum wire has higher conductance along the wire and much lower conductance across it, absurd tensile strength and light weight); the natural first customer on the road to commercialisation is anything to do with space, because performance and weigth is much more important than cost to these people.
You can gamble some money on unlikely alternative approaches to fusion(a few million here and there to see if there's anything to it. E.g. focus fusion and polywell IEC).
You can encourage people to eat less meat or shift consumption towards chicken(much more efficient at converting grains into meat than cattle, sheep or pigs).
You can put a fuel consumption rating on food to encourage people to pick stuff produced closer to home(not just miles, because trucks are far more efficient than aircraft, trains and inland barges far more efficient than trucks, huge container ships far more efficient than trains). You can discourage fuel and water intense forms of low density organic agriculture. You can encourage the development of GM crops, either through industry or entirely patent and royalty free varieties produced entirely with public funding.
There's just an endless list of stuff to pick from(much of which won't make much sense if you examine it closely, I'm sure).
