President Obama was as surprised as the rest of the world when he learned of the news Friday morning that he had received the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. It is true that the Obama administration has been undertaking recent efforts towards the promotion of peace. Secretary of State Clinton just recently represented the U.S. administration in overseeing negotiations on the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia, two states long feuding over the conduct of the Ottoman Empire in its waning years. However, nominations for the Nobel Prize were due on the first day of February, mere days after the January 20 inauguration of Mr. Obama. 

At that early stage, the Obama administration was still coming together; there was not yet time for the new president to have done anything.  Therefore, President Obama was nominated for what he might manage to achieve rather than what he has done. This sets him apart from the two other sitting U.S. Presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize, Theodore Roosevelt (1906) and Woodrow Wilson, (1919) who led the efforts at peacefully concluding the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars respectively.

President Obama is also the third African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, in those instances too, past winners Ralph Bunche (1950) and Martin Luther King (1964) had clear track records of accomplishments behind them. These men, without a doubt, have left their mark on future generations. It is noteworthy and commendable that Barack Obama broke the color barrier on the office he now holds, but that was not something only he could do.

Rarely, if ever,  has a Nobel been awarded on the basis of future accomplishments. Even when the undeserving have won, they did so for things they had already done, not things they were going to do. Thus, the decision to honor President Obama with this award at this juncture is proposterous; it is one of those rare events in history which validates the idea that reality is stranger than fiction.

For these reasons, there can no longer be any doubt that the Nobel Peace Prize is, in its current form, little more than a joke. An award once intended to honor those who triumphed in the face of adversity has become a trophy honoring the politically correct over the truly excellent. In this year when the Communist Chinese celebrated their sixieth year of triumph over liberty and democracy, the Norwegian Nobel Committee overlooked the chance to award their peace prize to those promoting human rights in the Asian power. The year 2009 also marks the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests too. The award committee also could have honored a physician and women’s rights activist in Afghanistan, a country in which this year’s laureate is almost certain to escalate-rather than end-an existing war.  

Around the world, many kind things have been said lauding the U.S. President in response to the announcement Friday. This was to be expected, however. It is telling, nonetheless, that said leaders praised President Obama for what he might do rather than what he has done. No less than two past Nobel Peace Prize recipients of repute have criticized the choice of Obama this year, Mairead Maguire (1976) and Lech Walesa (1983).

In several years, there was no Nobel Peace Prize awarded, notably 1939 and 1972. In those years, the prize money was allocated for other purposes or causes. Once, in 1973, one of the two winners declined to accept the award, demonstrating a precedent President Obama could have followed. There were questions raised in 1973 over the legitimacy of both winners, Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger, honored for their efforts to end the Vietnam War. Simply put, there is no need to award the prize in any particular year; not awarding the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 would have been more honorable than awarding it to an unaccomplished albeit well-liked U.S. President.

Perhaps, in their decision to render Barack Obama a Nobel laureate, the Norwegian Nobel Committee were trying to send a particular message. The idea has been proposed that President Obama was awarded for breaking with the policies of George W. Bush. But, if his presidency thus far has not been enough to suggest otherwise, then perhaps his backpedalling on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, or the frustrations of the LGBT community with this administration will be.  John McCain is correct that the American people can take pride in the honoring of his last electoral opponent, but the question should be asked if he would have been awarded were Barack Obama still a U.S. senator and Sarah Palin the Vice President. In either instance, the committee missed the irony of their disdain for a man clearly Wilsonian in his view of the world.

The Democratic National Committee too  missed the irony of its blind support for the decision announced in Oslo. Americans were told that they were unpatriotic and with the terrorists by a DNC spokesman for questioning the validity of President Obama’s Nobel Prize win. That Obama won, and that the DNC has not denounced and fired that spokesman demonstrates above all something noted here not long ago, that liberalism is dead.

Last 5 posts by James Kane

• A November to Remember - November 8th, 2010
• On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
• Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
• A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
• Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010