Nobel Vs Noble: Credit When Credit Is Due

Alfred Nobel's Will and Testament

In his Op-Ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman cavils about how it “dismays” him that “the most important prize in the world has been devalued in this way.” Let’s focus on that word—devalued—a moment.

Is Friedman suggesting that President Barack Obama, having been awarded a symbol of peace by five fellows from Norway, devalues the prize? Perhaps that the prize has been tarnished by the Nobel committee? Either way, the victim in Friedman’s pathology is the Nobel Prize itself.

I’m thinking the NP will survive it.

Friedman, who has crowed that the earth is flat, now implies that five Norwegians comprise “Europeans”—and by extension, Europe. They don’t.

Ross Douthat of the Times also purports that President Obama is a little like the popular kid in high school that everyone wants to be, who becomes too cool for his own good, and eventually gets resented for it:

Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad…Instead, he took the Nobel Peace prize.

Scoundrel. Douthat argues that it’s perfectly acceptable to turn down the highest accolade for which a statesman can be eligible. Although the president is a gifted orator and does claim a speechwriting roster of Aaron Sorkin disciples, disavowing the Nobel in a certain fading fireside manner would further underscore the controversy.

Douthat posits that the president isn’t brave enough to decline. He’s probably right; though who would be? America has been in dutch with the rest of the world for quite some time. Over the course of the previous eight years, our standing has fallen deeper and deeper into debt. When Barack Obama was running for president, his campaign was predicated on a Pepsi-Cola-like theme that begged to be printed on posters and foisted onto dorm room walls and magazine covers: HOPE.

If I recall correctly, Bill Clinton ran under this gonfalon in 1991. Endorsing this vague and aspirational message, this taste of a new generation, is like applying for a credit card. We don’t pay for our selection until later; it’s like making a promise and holding ourselves to it, or defaulting.

On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will in Paris. In it, the following sentence stands out:

During the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

When Barack Obama was elected president, a sigh of relief resounded in parts of the world that had since written-off America’s reputation. He hadn’t done a thing, but Obama’s very presence in the most powerful post in the democratic world was historic and symbolic. His very inauguration did, in fact, work toward building a fraternity between dubious nations.

Has the president yet lived up to the promise he, well, promised us? Not yet. Will he? We can only hope.

Opinion writers like Maureen Dowd are bandying about the names of worthier candidates past and present for the Nobel. I won’t disagree that all mentioned in their columns are worthy inasmuch as, well, they’ve lived and done the selfless work to earn it. And it is indeed a travesty that Mohandus Gandhi never received one, even posthumously (which would have been an even more profound event). But they never threw their hats in the ring, either. That’s not how the process works. By that token, what are the repercussions of a recipient’s declination? Does the American president deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? I don’t believe so—and neither does he. All he can do is strive to earn it in installments.

True/Slant’s own Elie Mystal suggests that reaction to President Obama’s prize win is reminiscent of white America denouncing Martin Luther King Jr.’s in 1964. Whew.

I’m not touching that because it’s a different world (perhaps even a flat one) today. But I do recognize Mystal’s reaction to the reaction: He barked because the denouncers bit.

Barack Obama’s campaign for president was focused on the aspirational. For what else is hope, than the anticipation of something better? His unearned—or, prematurely earned—Nobel Peace Prize is an indication that a small handful of (influential) people in ROW (Rest Of World) believe in what is possible going forward. In a way, they gave him credit.

I hope he’s good for it.