I was appalled to learn that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I was even more appalled to learn he was nominated by the prize committee after only two weeks in office.
I understand that Obama was nominated because of his “intentions” to stop nuclear disarmament. No sitting president has received the Nobel Prize without having any concrete achievements. That’s like giving a student an A+ for an entire course because he shows up the first day of class and tells the teacher he “intends” to be the top student in the class.
Both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Prize six years after taking office. They won for their negotiations in ending wars. Roosevelt won for negotiating the end of the Japanese-Russian War in 1906, while Woodrow Wilson won for his conditions for a peace treaty and his plan for setting up a League of Nations, which was to be the United Nations.
All presidents have intentions of ending war (with George Bush’s War on Terriorism being the exception). I believe several U.S. Presidents over the past forty or fifty years were much more deserving of the Nobel prize than Obama. Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights bill, Nixon’s restoring diplomatic relations with China and the Reagan-Bush administrations for further arms reduction with the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the Johnson’s downfall was Vietnam, Nixon’s was Watergate (and being a poor domestic president) and Reagan’s was his appeal to the everyday working class man, not the east coast elites.
Obama has yet to be tested. We don’t know if his intentions will translate into reality.
Jimmy Carter was the last president to receive the Nobel Prize, although he received it after leaving office. Al Gore also received a Nobel Prize for his environmental work showcased in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
It seems that the Nobel Prize is awarded not on the basis of achievement, but on the basis of sharing the same political views as the Nobel Committee. Ronald Reagan didn’t have a chance.
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