You can absolutely configure Windows to open folders -- and all other shortcuts -- with a single click, and IIRC one of the knocks against Windows ME was that this was the default option. And it was godawful, along with the "click" noise it made on navigation. (I think it was WinME. I've probably suppressed the memory, and rightly so.)

But the long and short of it is if you want consistency between your UI's in that regard you can indeed have it.