"Great Expectations" - The Nobel Peace Prize and Barack Obama

Yesterday, Oslo surprised and amazed the world.

In one of the most stunning developments of the year, the
Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee decided to award
the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.

Both liberal and conservative reaction was mixed.
While liberals generally applauded the selection, they
were also puzzled in that many of the President's
Nobel-worthy initiatives - most notably, on peace and
climate change - have yet to bear any fruit.

Conservatives, on the other hand, had no such problem.
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck immediately seized on
the award as Proof Positive of President Obama's lack of
American-ness.

To conservatives, Obama's not one of us - a red-blooded
American. He's one of them - a soft, idealistic,
European Socialist.

But to this writer, there is nothing truly unusual about
the award. In fact, there are many reasons for it.

First, and most importantly, Obama is the Un-Bush.
To the Europeans, George W. Bush represented everything they
most detested about America; provincial, small-minded, ignorant
of the larger world, who compensated for his ignorance with an
"armed and dangerous" arrogance towards both his friends and
his perceived enemies.

But Obama - now, there at last, is an American President
who gets it. One of us. A man comfortable with policy
details. A man who prefers the solutions of technocrats
to the imperfect messiness of mere politicians.

And more importantly, he understands the grand
gesture - the great speech. Without great words of
inspiration and imagination, even the most necessary
and pragmatic actions fall short.

In other words, from the European standpoint, The
Perfect Nobel Laureate.

So what if he hasn't yet achieved anything? Look at Al
Gore - the 2007 Nobel Laureate. He made lots of grand
speeches about Climate Change - even wrote a book about it.
It doesn't matter that his policy prescriptions haven't been
implemented anywhere yet - he said all the right things
to all the right people. Style -that's what matters . Substance?
that's better put off for another day. We don't want to think
about that. Not right now.

And this tendency to reward good intentions rather than
good results actually suits Obama rather well. In the actual
arena of getting things done, he has shown a distressing
tendency to both temporize and compromise rather than
engage in tooth-and-claw combat for his programs and
beliefs. But now, thanks to the Nobel Prize award, he'll have
to change that.

He'll actually have to produce.

And if he achieves just a fraction of what he has set out to do -
achieve global agreement on climate change, settle the Israeli-
Palestinian dispute, and start on ridding the world of nuclear
weapons - he'll be worthy of the award.

And if he were to make a more lasting contribution - to
enact universal health care here at home and bring to
heel once and for all the global financial elites who
threaten the well-being and prosperity of all peoples, then
he'll truly deserve this award - and every other a grateful
world can bring him.

Truly, "Great Expectations".