Preemptive prize winning

I was up early last Friday morning, and the last thing I expected to hear on the news was that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

When I heard this, I literally stopped what I was doing and turned the television louder – I must have heard the wrong thing. But alas, I had not, and since then, I don’t think the whole notion has yet sunk in for me.

There is nothing wrong with an American president winning the Nobel Peace Prize while in office. In fact, the more Americans who win the Nobel Peace Prize, the better.

But when someone wins the award without deserving it – American or otherwise – it begins to erode something as seemingly credible as the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is not to say that Obama will never deserve the prize, but simply that it came too soon.

According to the Nobel Peace Prize Organization, the deadline for submitting a candidate for the award is Feb. 1. This means that less than two weeks after Obama was in office, he was nominated.

As you well know by this point, Obama was awarded the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Less than two weeks after he took office? Come on.

Undoubtedly, through his numerous speeches while he was campaigning and since he took office, strengthening foreign relations has been at the forefront of topics. But speaking about and doing something about international diplomacy are two different things.

As a student, you don’t get rewarded for talking about what grade you want to receive in a class. Rather, you get the grade you want by getting a particular score on a test.
For the other categories that were awarded this year’s prize, the words “achievements,” “invention” and “discovery” are used. Obama’s “efforts” have not yet evolved into anything tangible.

Not to be too pessimistic, but if and when those efforts become tangible, they may also be unsuccessful – just a thought.

If anything, I would say that the meetings between the U.S. and Iran, for example, are creating more trouble. Peace and appeasing a tyrannical leader are certainly two different things.

At the end of the day, I just feel that the Norwegian Parliament, which appoints the committee that chose Obama for this honor, are happy a president with socialist tendencies has taken office in the U.S. Maybe they were simply impressed with the way that Obama was imitating their country, with the creation of more and higher taxes.

Needless to say, the reactions to Obama receiving this award have been mixed (after the initial shock has settled), like the reaction the American people have toward his foreign policy agenda.