We are America and our politicians are only as powerful as we, the people allow them to be.
Unfortunately, The People have allowed them to be much more powerful than they ought to because they have grown lazy, stupid and self centered. And I only see it getting worse. The 2012 election was a defining milestone moment for America where we, as a majority, would rather ignore the record of a failed and corrupt Administration in order to get free food stamps, phones, condoms and second rate health care. For this, America is very unlikely to turn back and freedom is doomed, just as just as Alexis de Tocqueville predicted 180 years ago...
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
IMO, there is no other option but to prepare for surviving in Obama's "transformed" America.