Trust us, okay? This is not just our opinion, but one widely held by political observers across the globe. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama makes him look ridiculous. Having said that, let us now take exception from several points of conventional wisdom about the award.
The first point, offered by fair-minded critics and embarrassed supporters of the president, is that he is not to blame for the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision.
Then there are the few pro-Obama commentators who have gamely tried to defend the award as both prestigious and deserved have argued that if he has accomplished nothing else, Obama has at least put a stop to Bush-era anti-Americanism.
Finally, there's the all-too-common claim that Obama got the award for being "not George W. Bush."
We'll start with the last one first. Not being George W. Bush was not a sufficient condition for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. If it had been, anyone could have gotten it, with the sole exception of George W. Bush. More to the point, the combination of not being George W. Bush and being president almost certainly wasn't sufficient either. Does anyone think the Norwegians would have given the prize to President Hillary Clinton or John McCain?
Like a growing number of people, we believe the prize was a rebuke to George W. Bush. That is why the claim that Obama has inspired a turnaround in the so-called world's attitude toward America is not only false but laughable. When George W. Bush was president, the Norwegian Nobel Committee delivered three similar rebukes: in 2002 (by naming Jimmy Carter), 2005 (Mohammad ElBaradei) and 2007 (Al Gore). The Obama award is a continuation of, not a break from, the committee's behavior of the past eight years.
To date, Obama's track record of accomplishment consists of nothing more than a successful political campaign against, as he stated at the Democratic Convention last summer, "the failed policies of George W. Bush." Many wondered whether running against a man who would not appear on the ballot made political sense. The outcome speaks for itself.
But whether out of political calculation or sheer carelessness, Obama has continued, in effect, campaigning against George W. Bush. He frequently laments the "mess" he "inherited"--as if he had been born into the presidency or won it in a lottery rather than seeking out the responsibility he now holds.
You'd be hard pressed to find any president in our lifetime attacking his predecessor in this manner, or at all. We haven't exhaustively researched the question, but our impression is that you'd have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt to find one who did. His attacks on Herbert Hoover were for domestic, not foreign, consumption.
Why did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? Because he pandered to the prejudices of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Surely he didn't do it with the Peace Prize (or at least this year's Peace Prize) in mind. He did it because disparaging George W. Bush is a cheap way of winning approval among certain constituencies, both foreign and domestic.
Until last Friday, one might have argued that this was all quite harmless. But by seeking adulation that he did not deserve, the president of the United States helped make himself into a figure of ridicule. Barack Obama did not award himself the Nobel Peace Prize, but his reckless rhetoric encouraged those who did.
