Donít get me wrong ó Iím not going to knock President Obama for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. In keeping with his usual elegance, he humbly spun the win into an affirmation of his administrationís goals. To pundits who suggest he should have declined the prize, I say that would perhaps have been the worst move he could have made ó it would have undermined Obamaís mission of reintroducing the United States into the world community in a major way.
Only one person in history, Le Duc Tho, has ever declined the peace prize and his reason ó that Vietnam had not yet achieved peace ó was a political statement about an unjust situation. This is not analogous to Obamaís predicament. Were he to decline the prize merely out of disagreement with the committee, it would come off as an insult and an affront to the Nobel Prize Committee and, by extension, the international community.
Instead, Obama admitted that he didnít deserve the award, attributed it to the American people as a whole and, politically, made the best of a bad situation. Itís really a shame that the media has more or less ignored his elegant handling of the situation, and Iíd encourage anyone whoís interested to look up the speech on YouTube.
The Nobel committee, however, should have known better.† There is no question that Obama didnít deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.† He was nominated only two weeks after his election, a time in which he had made many accomplishments as a statesman and politician but done nothing substantive for the cause of peace. The committeeís vague description of his ìextraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” is a joke. At the time of his nomination, Obamaís extraordinary efforts had mainly been directed at getting elected. Even to date, Obamaís list on the foreign policy section of whitehouse.gov labeled ìProgress” reads like a to-do list ó ìAnnounced a plan, announced a strategy, agreed to negotiation of a treaty, announced a new policy.”† Apparently the Nobel committee considers the greatest possible contribution to peace to be ó announcing things.
Itís hard to put this down as anything but a political move on the part of the Nobel committee. And as a political move, itís hard to imagine how they thought this would be helpful to Obama or his cause.
As it has been since his election, America is split into the almost fanatical pro-Obama group for whom Obama can do no wrong and the fact-defying rabble of angry conservatives for whom Obama can do no right. The people in the middle are the disillusioned former members of group A who have been unhappy with Obamaís ability to put his promises into action. Now which of these groups is going to see the Nobel Peace Prize as a prestigious international award that unbiasedly recognizes contributions to peace, and which is going to see it as a political organization of Europeans who want to encourage the United States to ìplay nicer” in whatever ways are in its power?† Those who respect the opinion of the international community are those who already support Obama. As a result, all this prize has done, and all it could have done at this point, is further polarize the country.
Now think instead what might have happened if the committee had held its horses and waited until Obamaís promises had become realities to award the prize?† Instead of us merely having to trust the authority of the five Norwegians who award the prize, we could have pointed to the prize as an affirmation of something substantive, something anti-Obamaists would have a much harder time dismissing.† Instead of a hollow, empty victory meaningful only to those who already agreed with it, we would have had a real cause to celebrate the good work of the Obama administration.
As things stand now, even if Obama receives another, more deserved prize down the road, what will it mean? ìObama won the peace prize,” weíll say, ìBut oh wait, he won it years ago just for showing up.”
Jonah Comstock is co-editor in chief for the Voice. He can be reached for comment at JComstock10@wooster.edu.