Barack Obama, Nobel Laureate

The news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize goosed the national media today--it even drove back the "bombing" of the moon off the front page. From where I sit, the most entertaining aspect of this award is the reaction it is engendering, from both the right and the left.

To be perfectly frank, of course he doesn't deserve it. As one wag wrote, you don't give an Oscar to the film that looks like it's going to be the best, you give it to the one that actually is (hmmn, maybe that's a bad example). The Nobel committee seems to be voting on Obama's good intentions, or perhaps more accurately, that he is not George W. Bush. After eight years of a White House that wasn't interested in diplomacy, Obama seems like a ray of sunshine.

But the caterwauling of those who oppose this is amusing. The Nobel committee, those Scandinavian scamps, have excelled at poking the wasp's nest of the American right. In the past decade, they've given the medal to Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and now Obama. Surely the Clintons will be next. It's getting hard for Republicans to take any solace here, as it's been a long time since Henry Kissinger won, and Theodore Roosevelt, if Glenn Beck is any barometer, isn't valued as a Republican anymore.

What will any of this really mean? Some say it's a bad thing for Obama, and further reinforces his status as a celebrity president in a cult of personality. It also highlights that he hasn't actually accomplished anything, as the stinging SNL skit last Saturday night lampooned. On the other hand, I think there are some Americans who aren't as extreme as the RedState.org folks who may value a president who is admired as a world leader. This won't help him get health care passed, but I don't think it can hurt. By the time he leaves office he really may have earned this award.

A quick word on Herta Müller, who won the Nobel for Literature. No, I'd never heard of her, either. The literature committee is notorious for being Euro-centric and rewarding unknown European writers over bigger names from North America, but also they've been pretty criminal in overlooking Asian writers. Nevertheless, this award, in the long run, means nothing but a nice windfall for the winner, plus a modest increase in sales in the back catalogue. I wish that Philip Roth, my favorite novelist, wins some day, but I imagine neither he nor I will lose too much sleep if the doesn't.