Excessive praise can be unwelcome and embarrassing. Just ask President Obama, who awoke Friday to discover that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he had completed even a year in office. Obama managed to be both abashed and appreciative in his response, but no amount of self-effacing spin can obscure the oddity of this award.
For the president’s critics on the right, the Nobel feeds a narrative in which Obama is more interested in flattering foreigners than in defending U.S. interests. To those in his restive progressive base, it appears that the peacemaker’s mantle has been draped on the shoulders of a president who is presiding over two distant wars and who may soon send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
For our part, we’re fans of the president. We endorsed him for the job, and we greatly prefer him to his predecessor. But it’s difficult to see why he deserves the peace prize so soon after taking office. The Nobel committee didn’t just embarrass Obama, it diminished the credibility of the prize itself….
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
I realize it is a risk to post this at all in that it can just become a Rorschach test about this President. But I have no choice since it is a very important story.
Please keep comments on the subject of the prize itself, the selection made, and the argument of the LA Times editorial. Thank you.
From Dee:
Telling me the Nobel Peace Prize selection was rigged, would be like telling me that Billy Graham was a fake…….first you would have to prove it to me….and if you did prove it to me, I’d probably still doubt…….I have always respected both…….so I do hope we don’t have a lot of people second guessing the committee.
From EP:
I think the money quote from the article is …
“It’s hard to escape the impression that Obama was honored because he isn’t George W. Bush.”
Yes. It seems to be less as kudos to Obama than as a smarmy, patronizing swipe at GWB and the American people. Obama should make a pointed refusal of this proffered but malodorous award….
End edited out–ed.
From Christopher Johnson;
I am certainly not a fan of Barack Obama but the President cannot be blamed for receiving an award he didn’t ask or campaign for. If anyone is at fault here, it is the Norwegian…[committee members] who voted to give him this award. In their zeal to take one last shot at George W. Bush, they succeeded in not only diminishing whatever prestige the Nobel Peace Prize had left but also turning their preferred US president into the… [punch line] of American jokes.
Slightly edited-ed.