Say this about President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize: It provided rare grist for the agreement mill. Most Americans agree he’s a controversial choice. And many agree its award to the rookie U.S. president was, well, kind of premature. End of agreement.
GOPsters call it a Euro-centric sham. It’s Obama’s reward for not being the reviled George W. Bush. It’s an audacity of hope sequel and much ado about a prime time poseur. And it’s also a gratuitous, room-service punch line for a spectrum of forums – ranging from Rush Limbaugh screeds to Saturday Night Live skits.
Dems point to the Nobel Committee’s own words that cite Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Has the planet ever been in greater need of such an effort from the one person in the world – the president of the United States of America – with the wherewithal to matter most?
They will also tell you that the ship of state doesn’t change course on a dime. Sending the world all the right rhetorical signals — steeped in commitment — is a necessary step. Recognize that Obama’s challenge is uniquely complicated by the need to undo – before doing. Recall that America owned the moral high ground, except for Muslim rabble and jihadi zealots, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Then we morphed into an occupier with the Iraqi invasion of choice. Then Abu Ghraib. Then – the 9/11 disconnect.
And they will also tell you how impossibly unfair it is, in effect, to blame Obama for not yet seeing his words realized with peace in the Middle East, a measurable decrease in global warming and a world devoid of nuclear weapons. But only an American president has the global clout to effectively underscore such priorities and even attempt to rally international support. There are, of course, no guarantees – except for the guarantee that nothing can change absent American buy-in and leadership.
Having said all that, the Nobel Committee arguably did get ahead of itself. And you don’t have to be a Glenn Beck acolyte to believe that. “He’s proposing things, he’s initiating things, but he is yet to deliver,” noted Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president and the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Indeed, what would Obama get if his “extraordinary efforts” do yield tangible results? The Cy Young Award? The Chicago Olympics?
The Nobel Prize has been awarded 90 times to 120 laureates between 1901 and 2009. That represents 97 individuals and 23 organizations. They run the gamut from Woodrow Wilson (1919), Albert Schweitzer (1952) and Martin Luther King Jr. (1964) to Anwar Sadat (1978), Mother Teresa (1979) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1990). Mahatma Gandhi never won one. Some years it wasn’t awarded at all, but that hasn’t happened since 1972.
The case can be made that such omissions should occur more often. Perhaps this was one such.
To Obama’s credit, he struck the right chord in his acceptance response. He seemed blindsided and instinctively knew this would be a mixed blessing 10 months into his polarized presidency.
“…I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,” said the president. “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.”
Would that they were the last words on the subject.