What we need from the President is commitment and direction. And what I'm seeing so far is commitment and direction. I'm hopeful about what the President will announce on Wednesday. I'm not hopeful for big plans and big changes in NASA. NASA is not nimble, it's a big ship that needs patience and a steady course: we shouldn't scrap the Shuttle Program, but we should phase out NASA operating the Shuttle, we of course don't want to scrap ISS, but rather phase out NASA involvement in it's operations.
As far as the Moon, it should be seen as a way to get to Mars and other places. It should be recognized that we do not wish to repeat with the Moon what we did with the Shuttle and ISS. It should recognized that NASA's job is NOT to make rocket fuel, NASA's job is to determine whether there is or is not resources on the Moon which could be mined to make rocket fuel. What we don't want is NASA mining the unminable [though perhaps harder for some to see, it would even be more tragic if NASA mined the minable]. If there is minable water on the Moon, then NASA can be an aggressive buyer of that rocket fuel and it can do this by having a robust Manned Mars program which utilizes this rocket fuel.
The NASA boat should point to Mars [and NEOs], the first stop of this boat should be Earth/Moon L-1 or 2 (or any high Earth orbit). Even if there were no minable resources on the Moon or NEOs, L-1 is still a good destination as a pit stop. A NASA program to determine if there is minable lunar water, should be a relatively small program which has a finite time period of termination. You could have other things "tacked on" to this program which could continue after it's termination.
With the Apollo program, you had a primary goal of landing a man on the surface of the Moon before the Soviets, it also had other things tacked on to this program: studying the geology of Moon, building a space station, and even going to Mars [as a vague possiblity]. If the Soviets had beaten us to the Moon, it's possible that we would have put more money into somehow beating them- a space station or even going to Mars- Or something completely unrelated to Space exploration. The underlying reason why we had the Apollo program was because the common perception then [as well as now] is the Space was the future [& the Soviets were amazingly successful at selling the idea that they represented the future]. Now, I think it's a proven fact that space is part of our future- it's a billion dollar industry excluding govt projects and it's essential as far as maintaining national security- space assets is to the miltary as is an air force is to a miltary or a navy is to a miltary.
There is no reason to assume that the importance of Space will diminish, and the only question is really "When" not "If". And if you look very closely at this issue, you will realize that rather than the time being in some distant future, the "proper time to address this" was yesterday.