They award it to Barack Obama? For what tangible results over a period of time? He’s been in office less than a year, but has almost nothing to show for it (and, to be fair, a year isn’t a long time in American politics). But I’m not the only doubter, as Benedict Brogan is equally flabbergasted at the decision:
Nobel prize for President Obama is a shocker. He should turn it down.
They could have awarded it to Kylie Minogue and I wouldn’t have been half as surprised as I am watching the television screens around me proclaiming that Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel peace prize. The whole business of a bunch of Scandinavian worthies doling out the profits of a long-gone dynamite maker’s fortune has always smacked of the worst sort of self-satisfied plutocratic worthiness. But this takes the biscuit. President Obama remains the barely man of world politics, barely a senator now barely a president, yet in the land of the Euro-weenies (copyright PJ O’Rourke) the great and the good remain in his thrall. To reward him for a blank results sheet, to inflate him when he has no achievements to his name, makes a mockery of what, let’s face it, is an already fairly discredited process (remember Rigoberta Menchu in 1992? Ha!). That’s not the point. What this does is accelerate the elevation of President Obama to a comedy confection, which he does not deserve, and gives his critics yet another bat to whack him with.
Update: Radley Balko sent this twitter post:
Nobel committee also gives Obama Physics prize, citing shirtless beach photo as example that he’s “quite the physical specimen.”
Update, the second: The Whited Sepulchre points out that
it was just a few weeks ago that The Teleprompter Jesus ordered a dozen Bunker-Busting Bombs for a potential attack on Iran. (Bunker-Busters are the most devastating weapons available without going nuclear.) [. . .]
I heard the folks on NPR fumbling around this morning, trying to explain the Nobel committee’s decision. Even that gang of White House Sock Puppets were bewildered. They decided that it was probably awarded for Obama’s desire for “Multilateral Approaches” to world conflicts. [. . .] I wonder if Iran is worried about France building up Bunker-Buster stockpiles…..
Everyone knew Obama would get this award, but I figured they would have the decency to wait until he was out of office, the way they did it with Jimmy Carter or The Goracle Of Music City and any other Democrats that I may have overlooked.
Update, the third: Crikey, even the Guardian thinks it was a premature award.
The citation describes his “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples” in his outreach to the Muslim world and efforts to end nuclear proliferation.
Which is all very well, except that Obama is fighting wars in two Islamic states — Iraq and Afghanistan — and his efforts at international diplomacy, notwithstanding his powerful desire to achieve quick results, has thus far shown almost no progress in pushing forward peace talks in the Middle East and only very partial progress on Iran. It is true that he has made real advances in “resetting” US-Russian relations, not least over his decision to cancel an anti-missile shield that was to be based in eastern Europe, but the consequences of that engagement are too early to judge.
The reality is that the prize appears to have been awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not. For not being George W Bush.
