The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Questions Nobody Is Asking
“Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin?”–headline, New York Times Web site, Oct. 6
House Bites Car–Now That Would Be News
“Car Takes a Bite Out of Lomita House”–headline, Daily Breeze (Torrance, Calif.), Oct. 8
Most Embarrassing Moment
Yasser Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize, too. In a way, though, this comparison is unfair to Arafat, who, by signing the Oslo Accords, had at least accomplished something on paper. What has Barack Obama, in office less than nine months, actually done to promote peace?
Besides the beer summit, we mean.
You see the problem here. The jokes write themselves. Six days ago, “Saturday Night Live” was mocking Obama for having accomplished nothing, and the president’s media protectors were crying foul. After all, can’t expect a guy to accomplish very much in a few short months. But the incongruity of this staggeringly premature honor–the equivalent of a lifetime-achievement Oscar for a child star–makes yesterday’s satire into today’s news. Thus Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press:
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what? . . .
The prize seems to be more for Obama’s promise than for his performance. Work on the president’s ambitious agenda, both at home and abroad, is barely underway, much less finished. He has no standout moment of victory that would seem to warrant a verdict as sweeping as that issued by the Nobel committee.
And what about peace? Obama is running two wars in the Muslim world–in Iraq and Afghanistan–and can’t get a climate change bill through his own Congress.
His scorecard for the year is largely an “incomplete,” if he’s being graded.
Loven goes on to list the promises yet unkept: closing Guantanamo, bringing the troops home from Iraq, making peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, etc. The only thing missing is “Live, from New York . . .!”
Oh, and actually, we’re not sure the beer summit even counts. CNN noted earlier (in a passage that has been cut from this story):
Nominations for the prize had to be postmarked by February 1–only 12 days after Obama took office. The committee sent out its solicitation for nominations last September–two months before Obama was elected president.
So Obama was already a nominee by the time he had completed 0.82% of his presidential term. “There is one lovely, delicious, delectable thing about it: it will drive the American right wing up the wall,” writes Michael Tomasky, Washington correspondent for London’s left-wing Guardian. And indeed, it has prompted such up-the-wall right-wing commentary as this:
This is so out of nowhere that it could be almost embarrassing for the White House. If Obama and his people try to act like this was really deserved, he could actually damage himself politically.
If I were in the boiler room over there, I would begin by suggesting to the president that he demur altogether. That he tell the committee that while he’s deeply touched, he does not in fact feel that he has yet done the work to earn this award
Oh, sorry! That wasn’t a right-winger, it was Michael Tomasky. The truth be told, the American right is the least likely group to be driven “up the wall” by this. They have already discounted the Nobel Peace Prize for parochial partisanship. Obama’s is the third of the past eight Nobel Peace Prizes to go to a member of the U.S. Democratic Party (after Jimmy Carter and Al Gore), and the fourth of the eight that seems a direct rebuke to now-former president George W. Bush (Mohammed ElBaradei being the non-American among this category).
Thus a conservative can argue that Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because it is already so devalued. Commentary’s John Podhoretz:
The Nobel Committee chose him wisely because he does, in fact, represent the organization’s highest ideals.
He is an American president queasy about the projection of American power. He is an American president who rejects the notion of American exceptionalism. He is an American president eagerly in pursuit of legitimacy to be granted him not by those who voted for him but by those who do not cast a vote and who chafe at American leadership. It is his devout wish that America become one of many nations, influencing the world indirectly or not influencing it at all, rather than “the indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright characterized it. He is the encapsulation, the representative, the wish fulfillment, the very embodiment, of the multilateralist impulse. He is, almost literally, a dream come true for the sorts of people who treasure and value the Nobel Peace Prize.
But if you think the prize is still a source of prestige, you have to be mystified or embarrassed. “Obama Peace Prize Win Has Americans Asking Why?” reads a Reuters headline, and the dispatch, datelined New York, quotes many people from liberal precincts:
“It would be wonderful if I could think why he won,” said Claire Sprague, 82, a retired English professor as she walked her dog in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. “They wanted to give him an honor I guess but I can’t think what for.”
Itya Silverio, 33, of Brooklyn, was also surprised. “My first opinion is that he got it because he’s black,” she said. “What did he do that was so great? He hasn’t even finished office yet.” . . .
Some said the choice could damage the Nobel committee’s credibility and that of the award.
“It looks less like an objective award than it does a political endorsement,” said William Jelani Cobb, a history professor at Spelman College in Atlanta and author of a forthcoming book on Obama.
“Guantanamo is not closed yet and it makes it difficult for him to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan,” he said. . . .
Many seemed happy even if they weren’t sure why Obama won.
“How wonderful, I think that’s fantastic,” said David Spierer, 48, from New York who works in medical sales. “I know what he’s doing but what has he done? Change is coming but you don’t win a Nobel Peace Prize for the future.”
“Obama won? Really? Wow,” said David Hassan, 43, of Pine Brook, New Jersey. “He deserves it I guess, he’s the president. He’s a smart guy and I guess he’s into peace.”
Perhaps the strongest evidence that the prize is embarrassing to the president is that it has prompted a display of vicious partisanship–from the Democrats. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued a statement quoted by the Baltimore Sun:
“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights,” Steele said.
“One thing is certain–President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action,” added the former Maryland lieutenant governor.
If Obama had really won something worth winning, his supporters would have replied to Steele with a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger disparagement of partisan sour grapes. Instead, as Politico’s Ben Smith reports, the Democratic National Committee went into an insane rage:
“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists–the Taliban and Hamas this morning–in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told Politico. “Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize–an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride–unless of course you are the Republican Party.
“The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore–it’s an embarrassing label to claim,” Woodhouse said.
So within hours of the president’s being honored for his commitment to “multilateral diplomacy . . . dialogue and negotiations,” his surrogates were attacking his domestic opponents in the most crudely jingoistic terms. The question is not whether Obama can live up to the Nobel Peace Prize, but whether he will be able to live it down.
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