Oct 10/2009WASHINGTON - President Obama was surprised and wasn’t sure he deserved it. His Republican critics were stunned and appalled. Even some of Obama’s allies declared themselves amazed at the turn of events.
Only the Norwegian Nobel Committee seemed clear on why a US president only nine months into his first term should receive the coveted Peace Prize it awarded to Obama yesterday, the third sitting American president to receive the honor.
The prize panel, which deliberates in secret, apparently gave the award to Obama more on the strength of what the president represents than what he has accomplished in his short time in office. They cited his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation among peoples,’’ adding that “only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.’’
Obama, who was awakened at 6 a.m. to be told of the award, said he viewed it as less a trib ute to him than a “call to action.’’ And he made it clear that, while honored and “humbled,’’ he felt somewhat discomfited by the award, which is more commonly granted to individuals or groups with years of work on issues of peace and human rights.
“Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,’’ a subdued Obama said in a brief Rose Garden speech.
“To be honest,’’ the president added, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize - men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.’’
Republicans immediately decried the announcement as the triumph of style over substance.
“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ ’’ Michael Steele, Republican National Committee chairman, said in a statement that pointedly declined to congratulate the president. “It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.’’
The Nobel Committee, in a thinly veiled rebuke of former president George W. Bush, said Obama has “created a new climate in international politics.’’
It said the president sought to “reset’’ relations with the world’s Muslims through a major speech in Cairo, sought a new nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia, engaged forcefully in the Middle East, and has tried to address hostile relations between the United States and Iran. All of those efforts are in their early stages, and success is uncertain. But the change of tone is real.
“In a sense, this is the anti-Bush peace prize, but it’s more than that,’’ said Tom Carothers, vice president for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “There was a psychological rift between the US and the world, and they feel that has been healed.’’
Obama will fly to Oslo in December for the award, and will donate the $1.4 million prize to charity, the White House said.
Democrats and Obama supporters cheered the announcement - including Al Gore, the former vice president who received the 2007 peace prize for his work on climate change. The news stunned nearly all observers, and many Democrats insisted the honor was not his alone.
“This was not an award for him. It was an award for America and its values, and it really is a tribute to our country and what we stand for,’’ said Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
The White House was low-key about the award; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the staff congratulated the president, but there were no champagne toasts or obvious celebrations. Obama had no idea he was eligible for the honor, and does not know who nominated him, Gibbs said.
According to the Nobel Foundation website, the Norwegian Nobel Committee selects the peace prize recipients after screening hundreds of nominations in closed-door deliberations over several months. The five-member panel is chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, and all the members are present or former members of that body.
At 48, Obama is the fourth-youngest Nobel peace laureate. He has served just nine months in office and was sworn in less than two weeks before the deadline for this year’s Nobel nominations.
“The peace prize is always given to the idea of the person rather than the person,’’ said Adil Najam, a Boston University professor who received the award with Gore as the lead author of an intergovernmental panel’s report on climate change. “The prize was won by the idea of Barack Obama as a global president.’’
The Nobel Committee embraces the idea of multilateralism and globalism, Najam said, “and they look around and say, ‘Who embodies that idea?’ Whether they have done [Obama] a favor or not, time will tell . . . it is really putting the pressure on him.’’
But James Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said being awarded a Nobel prize may have made Obama’s job harder.
“I don’t think the president woke up thinking this is a great deal,’’ Carafano said. “This is a distraction. Who the heck wants a prize when the first thing everyone asks you is, ‘Do you think you deserve this or not?’ ’’
Gibbs, however, dismissed suggestions that the high honor would interfere with Obama’s domestic agenda, Republican reactions notwithstanding.
“I think people believe that what this represents - renewed American leadership in order to make our country safer and to live up to our own ideals and the ideals that many in the world want to live up to - it’s a good thing, it’s an important thing,’’ Gibbs said.
With yesterday’s announcement, Obama becomes the third sitting president to receive the international honor.
President Theodore Roosevelt, who held office from 1901 to 1909, received the Nobel in 1906 for mediating a peace deal between Russia and Japan. President Wilson, in office from 1913 to 1921, was honored in 1919 as a founder of the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations.
Jimmy Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981, received it in 2002 for his efforts to promote peace and human rights.
The Nobel Committee has a long history of controversial choices for the peace prize, its most prestigious honor.
In 1973, two committee members resigned in protest when Henry Kissinger - President Nixon’s secretary of state who played a role in the secret US bombing of Cambodia and helped escalate the war in Vietnam - received the peace prize for his work on ending the war. The co-winner that year, North Vietnamese negotiator and revolutionary Le Duc Tho, refused to accept the award.
Another Nobel Committee member resigned in protest after Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat was named the 1994 co-winner of the prize, saying he was a terrorist.
The awarding of the prize to three prominent Democrats this decade - Carter, Gore, and Obama - has led some analysts to say that the committee has consistently sought to rebuke Bush’s presidency.
But Richard C. Eichenberg, associate professor of political science at Tufts University, said such criticism unfairly trivializes the meaning of the award. “What it means in substantive terms is an endorsement of American values as a basis of world politics. It is a positive statement rather than a negative statement.
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