The fundamental problem with the gold standard is the Liquidity Problem: there has to be an increase of the money supply as the economy grows. The money supply should roughly grow at the same pace as the general economy grows. The Bretton Woods currency system, which was the last remnant of the gold standard, collapsed in the 1970s because there was simply no reliable mechanism to increase the available gold reserves to keep pace with the growing world economy.

Even before most countries abandoned the gold standard before the World War II, the monetary policy was highly dependent of the discovery and the mining of new gold reserves, resulting in out of control monetary policies.

To quote Eichengreen how the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s: "Problems with the gold standard contributed directly to the collapse of output and to the increase in unemployment that began in 1929. [ ] The collapse of output and employment had preceded so far that the gold standard could no longer be supported. Once its provisions were finally removed from the international scene, economic recovery could commence."

A return to the gold standard, advocated by some ketchup economists left behind by time and reality, would throw the economy into cardiac arrest, into deflation and a recession far worse than what the world has seen so far.
References :
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=Qk1flhynCD8C&dq=eichengreen+barry&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=U4×2Sp_vKMWIkQWhtqWMDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12#v=onepage&q=&f=false

During and just after World War I, the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany all did it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Suspending_gold_payments_to_fund_the_war
Britain also did it during the Napoleonic Wars and the U.S. also did it during the Civil War.

(2) In theory, the U.S. could go back to the gold standard, but what would be the advantages and what would be the costs? Most agree the costs would outweigh the benefits.
http://www.pkarchive.org/cranks/goldbug.html
Even Greenspan, whose the case for returning to a gold standard in his 1966 paper "Gold and Economic Freedom" is always cited by the advocates, recognized that it wouldn’t be a good idea:
http://www.garynorth.com/public/344.cfm

(3) And you think a gold or silver standard keeps prices stable? ROTFL. Every time a new mine opens up or an old one closes down the whole world sees inflation or deflation. One famous case is the Price Revolution that affected all of Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution

(4) If the amount of money in circulation is limited by the amount of gold, then the rate at which the economy can grow and still have stable prices is limited by the rate at which the gold becomes available. That means much lower economic growth than the world has seen for a long time.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/gold_mcs05.pdf
Aside for the long term implications for the economy, do you really want to be much poorer than you are now with little hope of being much better off?
References :

It is currently near $1000 per ounce.

If we go back on the gold standard at the market level, then the government has officially declared that it stole that much money from our savings during that time.

I doubt that any prudent government is inclined to make any such statement.

But I’m pretty sure you could sell Obama on the idea.
References :

Gold is an outmoded commodity to peg currency value to, because it isn’t actually all that useful in modern times. It has some uses and technological applications, but it’s nothing special compared to the next metal or element. Historically it was useful and hence valuable because its malleability allowed it to be worked into jewelry easily, but this isn’t all that important any more.

If you want to peg currency to something indispensable in the modern world, how about oil?

But really, all currency that has no useful value in itself (like paper dollars) is backed by faith anyway. Requiring that you have enough gold/oil/whatever to back up your currency is necessarily restrictive to growth and defeats the purpose.
References :

Some days when the market has a "rally" many other currencies still see it as a drop. Why? Dollar value dropping.