‘Lumped with Mandela and Walesa’?

Yikes. Nobody saw this coming, this Nobel Peace Prize award conferred upon President Barack Obama. Nobody. What to say…?

The New York Times said this:

“Whatever it meant on the world stage, in the United States the award to Mr. Obama was a decidedly mixed blessing. It was a reminder of the gap between the ambitious promise of his words and his accomplishments. It drew attention to the fact that while much of the world was celebrating him as the anti-Bush, he had not broken as fully as he had once implied he would from the previous administration’s national security policies. And it set off another round of mocking criticism from opponents who have chafed at what they see as the charmed and entitled rise of Mr. Obama.”

“So while he accepted the award and said he would travel to Oslo to pick it up, Mr. Obama also sought to minimize any impression that he was basking in the glory or forgetting that he was a long way from achieving the goals — ridding the world of nuclear weapons, stopping global warming, bringing peace to the Middle East, among others — that the judges seemed to expect of him.”

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On what did they base those expectations? Nine months in office for President Obama? The speech to the Arab world they cited, the efforts toward nuclear proliferation, the Middle East peace negotiations all took place in those nine months. The Nobel Peace Prize judges needed nominations turned in by February 1, only 12 days after Obama took office. It was based on “aspirations.”

The announcment set off a spin cycle unlike anything the Obama adminsitration has had to handle yet. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs looked as flummoxed as he sounded in the White House press room. “We can help lead the world to do the types of things the president has outlined,” he said, stumbling through efforts to answer the press corps’ questions about what Obama had done to earn the award. “Those are….the aspirations held by many.”

Even savvy top advisor David Axelrod was at a loss. After all, the Nobel Peace Prize puts Obama in league with historically heroic figures.

“For the liberal base of the Democratic Party, the prize is a ratification of the belief that Mr. Obama’s election would carry powerful symbolic meaning. Abroad, it provides Mr. Obama additional stature to be lumped with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa.

“I’d like to believe that winning the Nobel Peace Prize is not a political liability,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “But this isn’t something I gave a moment of thought to until today. Hopefully people will receive it with some sense of pride. But I don’t know; it’s uncharted waters.”

The media have been navigating a new path though.

In roundtable panels of pundits on the news shows, even liberal analysts questioned the merit of this award. One said it’s like a minor leaguer called up the majors and then, a few months later, being named to the Hall of Fame. Without actually doing anything.

Another news panel laughed at the Saturday Night Live skit last week (before the Nobel Prize announcement) featuring an Obama lookalike admitting that after nine months in office, he has “nothing to show for it.”

“Take a look at this checklist” said the Obama ringer. “On my first day in office, I promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Have I done that? No. I said we’d be out of Iraq. Are we? Not last time I checked. I said I’d make improvements in Afghanistan. Is it better? No. I actually think it’s worse….I just don’t know why the Right is so worked up. The Left are the ones who should be mad. They’re the ones who thought I would’ve addressed one of these things by now: Global warming, not done. Immigration, not done…Torture prosecutions, not done. So, looking at this list, I’m seeing two big accomplishments: Jack, and Squat.”

Juan Williams of NPR and Fox News, said the skit was brilliant in building humor out of truth. And no, he said, Obama had not earned the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a political move to stay Obama’s hand from moving further into Afghanistan.

Within hours of the announcement from Oslo, the new edition of The Economist arrived in the mailbox. It carried a full page story ‘Down in the valley’ on ‘The president’s rocky fortnight’. It said “The man who can is suddenly looking unsure of himself”.

However, said the suddenly introspective Times…

“At the same time, Democrats quickly began making the argument that this was an honor less for this president, and more for this country, and that no one should offer any apologies. “It’s honoring the country,” said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska. “The Nobel committee couldn’t award the peace prize to the voters of the United States, but that’s what they are doing. It’s an award Americans should feel good about.”

Some do, because it’s an American. Some don’t, because there’s no body of accomplishments worthy of such an award, which makes it more irrelevant, say some analysts. There’s an abundance of reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama, and it will continue for days. It will be covered here.

Meanwhile, Saturday Night Live came on this weekend with the Obama character acknowledging the award, and boasting that believe it or not, he’s just won the $70 million superball lottery, on top of it all. “Can you believe it?!” he exulted.

Funny. Because this man has caused us to suspend disbelief, time and again.