Obama and the Prize: What Americans didn’t get
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
We didn’t get it.
We thought we understood how deeply the world resented America. We thought we grasped the immense damage that President Bush had done to the nation’s place in the world.
And yet, the stunning news that President Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize proves all these assumptions wrong. It was shocking news, in the literal sense of the term–no one, even the most wide-eyed Obama maniac, could have anticipated this.
Why? Because, living in America, many liberal Americans never quite understood the degree of anti-Americanism that the Bush Administration engendered. In part, that’s simply a function of national origin; the yearning this country inspires in others around the world is naturally unknowable to us. Obviously our own country is important to us; yet we often forget how important it is to the rest of the world.
As a result, we severely underestimated the extent of our troubles. I’m therefore not surprised that the reaction in the country is one of bafflement. He hasn’t done anything! He doesn’t deserve this! (See Peter Beinart, here, for an example.) Well, this isn’t about us. This is about everyone else, and the way in which the president’s election and subsequent pronouncements have torn asunder their perceptions of our country.
Moreover, the Nobel Peace Prize has always strove for symbolic resonance, and to recognize promise as much as anything else. Was Al Gore a great peacemaker, in the classical sense of the word? Of course not–but, like Obama’s, Gore’s project embodied the best hopes of the world. The same could be said of the last sitting president to receive the prize, Woodrow Wilson, who won it on the eve of the creation of the League of Nations. As we all know, the League was an historic flop. But, for one bright shining moment, it seemed to augur a better, more peaceful world.
We don’t yet know the fate of the Obama presidency. But this morning’s announcement makes crystal clear that, no matter what happens, the past year will be remembered as a time when people believed that a more peaceful, just world was at arm’s length.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ethan Porter. Ethan Porter said: Why Americans don't understand what just happened. http://tinyurl.com/yfk9k78 [...]
Mr. Porter,
Did you consider the possibility that the Nobel Committee was trying preemptively trying to make it more difficult for Mr. Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan and prevent a war, or at least military strike against, Iran? This is not say that what you wrote was wrong, but perhaps it is only part of the equation?
I thought about it, and I’ve seen others mentioned it, but it would be incredibly naive, politically, of the Committee to imagine that its designation would in any way constrain POTUS. And I don’t think the Committee is especially naive.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Porter,
I quite agree with you that the Nobel Committee is not at all naïve, which is why it does not make any sense for them to award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize per se only nine months into his presidency. This is a risky maneuver for them, they could indeed, and do in this country at least, look more than a bit foolish. Why would they take such a risk if not to achieve something bigger? Certainly the hope (which is all it is) that they can at least nudge the POTUS in a certain direction, makes much more sense than any alternative hypothesis, of which the only one is that the Nobel Committee is either crazy or stupid. Also being Nobel Laureate give Mr. Obama some additional weight to throw around. Having eliminated the other hypotheses, this is the only one left standing.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks, as always, for your thoughts. I would propose another explanation, however: this is the Committee’s way of signaling our welcome return to the role of world leader, in Europe and elsewhere. It was a grand, bold statement by them–and now we have to live up to it.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Porter,
I really doubt that the Nobel Committee would risk appearing foolish before the world and undermining its standing of the committee itself for the equivalent of a high five.
In response to another comment. See in context »Nicely said Ethan.
Thorbjoern Jagland, head of the Nobel Committee and a former Norwegian prime minister said it BEST, ” We are capturing the spirit of the times, the need of the era, in awarding the Nobel Peace prize to President Barrack Obama.” I’m all for the five member Nobel Committee that supports Obama’s vision and work for a ‘world that can be free of nuclear weapons.’
Obama has done an enormous amount of work to help our country and this world, in short of a year. Think about the former president who spent an entire year -plus, vacationing at his ranch in Texas. Congratulations President Obama and to the committee who awarded you this highest of honors. YOU indeed deserve it, in my humble opinion ~ an American, a high school teacher, a mother, a grandmother and a Peace advocate …. ALL of my life.