I say this in the most serious possible way. I hope in the next twenty or thirty years Russia or China builds a base on the moon and puts weapons on it. I'm not sure how useful weapons on the moon would be tactically, but at least a refueling/rearm station. You're right, getting to the moon was political. Sadly, the only way I can see to make it political again is the weaponization of space. Having another world power do this would jump start our space program in a drastic way.

EDIT: I apologize for the American bias in my post. When I say "our" I am referring to NASA. I think collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and/or the Russian Federal Space Agency would be good to some extent. Of course, this type of collaboration would probably prevent space exploration from becoming a political issue. And for reasons previously described, eliminating the politics from space exploration is probably a bad idea.