[speechlesstx]

Ross Douthat hits the nail on the head...

This was Barack Obama’s chance.

Here was an opportunity to cut himself free, in a stroke, from the baggage that’s weighed his presidency down — the implausible expectations, the utopian dreams, the messianic hoo-ha.

Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad, who poured their post-Christian, post-Marxist yearnings into the vessel of his 2008 campaign.

Here was a chance to establish himself, definitively, as an American president — too self-confident to accept an unearned accolade, and too instinctively democratic to go along with European humbug.

He didn’t take it. Instead, he took the Nobel Peace Prize.

Big mistake.

People have argued that you can’t turn down a Nobel. Please. Of course you can. Obama is a gifted rhetorician with world-class speechwriters. All he would have needed was a simple, graceful statement emphasizing the impossibility of accepting such an honor during his first year in office, with America’s armed forces still deep in two unfinished wars.

Would the world have been offended? Well, to start with, the prize isn’t given out by an imaginary “world community.” It’s voted on and handed out by a committee of five obscure Norwegians. So turning it down would have been a slap in the face, yes, to Thorbjorn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Agot Valle. But it wouldn’t have been a slap in the face to the Europeans or the Africans, to Moscow or Beijing, or to any other population or great power that an American president should fret about offending.

In any case, it will be far more offensive when Obama takes the stage in Oslo this November instead of Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s heroic opposition leader; or Thich Quang Do, the Buddhist monk and critic of Vietnam’s authoritarian regime; or Rebiya Kadeer, exiled from China for her labors on behalf of the oppressed Uighur minority; or anyone who has courted death this year protesting for democracy in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

True, Obama didn’t ask for this. It was obvious, from his halting delivery and slightly shamefaced air last Friday, that he wishes the Nobel committee hadn’t put him in this spot.

But he still wasn’t brave enough to tell it no.

Obama gains nothing from the prize. No domestic constituency will become more favorably disposed to him because five Norwegians think he’s already changed the world — and the Republicans were just handed the punch line for an easy recession-era attack ad. (To quote the Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, anticipating the 30-second spots to come: “He got a Nobel Prize. What did you get? A pink slip.”)

[spitvenom]

Really you are still hung up on this. So Sad rightys. Actually I take that back. Keep griping on this BS so we can pass health care while your distracted by this nonsense.

[speechlesstx]

Really you are still hung up on this. So Sad rightys. Actually I take that back. Keep griping on this BS so we can pass health care while your distracted by this nonsense.

Us still hung up on it? The media is still hung up on it, it's all over the place. I've already about it from both sides in today's paper. Our paper specifically solicited opinions. It's still news, Spit.

By the way, how'd you do? I squeaked out my 4th win in a row thanks to a lousy performance by the Jets D.

[spitvenom]

Speech I lost again. I think it was something like 155 to 123. I was winning until the 4:00pm games. I don't know I am in two other leagues and in first place. I don't know where I went wrong besides Vick as an experiment.

But The Phillies had a great game last night. That win was bitter sweet for me because I had tickets to Game 5 tonight if they needed it. Now I have to spend all day at work and no playoff game!!

[speechlesstx]

Now is the time to kick it up a notch if you can with all the byes coming up. That's the main thing I work on is making sure I have good fill-ins for the bye weeks. Of course on one team I pulled a boneheaded move and used Derek Anderson... -2 points for the week.

Go Phillies!

[speechlesstx]

Sorry Spit but I'm a little behind on my Huffpo reading and just had to share their logic.

Jacob Heilbrunn said, "It would be hard to think of a more electrifying and deserved recipient of this year's Nobel Peace prize than President Obama." But, "obviously, the award is based on the hope that Obama will achieve real progress in advancing diplomacy rather than confrontation around the globe."

I'm sure next year it will be renamed the Hopenchange Award in his honor.

Robert Fuller acknowledges his greatness this way, "Obama got the prize not for doing, but for being."

Good to know he's still The One.

[tomder55]

He's the 'prince of Peace' .

Stratfor is speculating the reason he got it is because the Europeans hope that he will not ask too much of them and that he will consult and give them veto power over American foreign policy decisions.

[tomder55]

[letmetellu]

In the past I have admired the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize but no more, I also thought that the winning of the prize was an honor but now I think the Noble Peace Prize is really no more of an honor that getting the prize out of a box of Cracker Jacks.

[ETWolverine]

In the past I have admired the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize but no more, I also thought that the winning of the prize was an honor but now I think the Noble Peace Prize is really no more of an honor that getting the prize out of a box of Cracker Jacks.

At least with Craker Jacks, someone took the action of buying the box.

When Arafat won the NPP, there was at least a piece of paper that he signed. He lied, but at least there was a piece of paper to show people.

Al Gore at least made a movie to win his NPP... full of misleading and ambiguous statements and outright lies, but at least there was something to show people.

Jimmy Carter had a bunch of leaky homes and a piece of paper signed by Sadat and Begin to show people as a reason for the NPP.

What actions has Obama taken to earn the NPP? What does he have to show the world? Other than his "Obamaness" (def: the state of being Obama), I mean.

Elliot

[speechlesstx]

Alas, the Norwegians have spoken...

Three of them rejected the notion that Obama hadn't accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question. A fifth member didn't answer calls seeking comment.

"We simply disagree that he has done nothing," committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. "He got the prize for what he has done."

Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to—I wouldn't say a safer world—but a world with less tension," Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

He said most world leaders were positive about the award and that most of the criticism was coming from the media and from Obama's political rivals.

"I take note of it. My response is only the judgment of the committee, which was unanimous," he said, adding that the award to Obama followed the guidelines set forth by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, who established the Nobel Prizes in his 1895 will.

"Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year," Jagland said. "Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?"

In the "previous year" Obama helped heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scaled down the Bush anti-missile shield in Europe? I thought about all he accomplished in the last year was running for and winning the presidency. And throwing his pastor and grandmother under the bus.