Peace Prize to President Obama

[bart]

I intend to write a piece of major literature some day, so may I have a Nobel Prize too please?

Mashinka, it's not so easy as that. You have now PUBLICLY stated your intent to write a great work of literature. Next step is a 6-month probationary period. If, at the end of the 6 months, you still feel the same way about this, you will indeed be eligible for the Prize in LIterature.

I myself have spent a lifetime earning, spending, and worrying about money. As a result of this "lifetime achievement," along with my prediction (during a heated dinner conversation about a year ago) that the housing bubble would burst, I am now on the short list for the Economics Prize in 2010.

Remember, also, that one of the functions of these prizes has been to give world recognition to worthy people not necessarily known in the mainstream media. You, I, and President Obama all qualify.

The various Nobel organizations have SOME standards, after all.

[YouOverThere]

Of course, Obama knew he was nominated ... I would think he could have asked to have his name withdrawn from consideration in contemplation of the firestorm of conflicting opinions which would undoubtedly result.

Apparently he did not know, at least according to Nightline. Anyone can nominate a person for the Nobel (I've had a candidate in mind for some time; maybe 2010 will be the year I submit the nomination) and not necessarily tell the person, or maybe the message wouldn't get through layers of staff to the nominee.

I believe that your statement that "anyone" can nominate someone for a Nobel Prize is incorrect. According to the Nobel Prize website, "Each year the respective Nobel Committees send individual invitations to thousands of members of academies, university professors, scientists from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others, asking them to submit candidates for the Nobel Prizes for the coming year. These nominators are chosen in such a way that as many countries and universities as possible are represented over time."

To refuse it after he's been announced as the winner would be ungracious, although I'm sure he would have done so in eloquent and gracious language. Plus, he gets to do good by donating the cash award to charity.

Declining might also be taken as an insult by the country (Norway) that awards the prizes.

[carbro]

I believe that your statement that "anyone" can nominate someone for a Nobel Prize is incorrect. According to the Nobel Prize website, "Each year the respective Nobel Committees send individual invitations to thousands of members of academies, university professors, scientists from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others, asking them to submit candidates for the Nobel Prizes for the coming year. These nominators are chosen in such a way that as many countries and universities as possible are represented over time."

Thanks for the correction, You. Here's a link to the list of qualifications if you aspire to be a nominator.

I would think that any person nominated should be notified by the committee that there name is up for consideration with respect to any public award. I don't see the point of not notifying them. Has the committee offered an explanation for this practice?

Indirectly, here. The database of past nominees (which would be fascinating, if I could access it ) claims to list names of all nominees 1901-1996. I was able to ascertain that Eleanor Roosevelt was a three-time nominee (the first time as a divided nomination shared with Soviet diplomat Alexandra Mikhaylovna Kollontay) through a name search.

[bart]

Thomas Friedman in the NY Times today seems to have a well-balanced take on

(a) the motivation behind the prize

The Nobel committee did President Obama no favors by prematurely awarding him its peace prize. As he himself acknowledged, he has not done anything yet on the scale that would normally merit such an award — and it dismays me that the most important prize in the world has been devalued in this way.

It is not the president’s fault, though, that the Europeans are so relieved at his style of leadership, in contrast to that of his predecessor, that they want to do all they can to validate and encourage it.

and, (b) advising Obama on how to respond when he goes to Oslo to accept the award. This part is especially impressive -- and politically shrewd. Maybe the White House needs a few people like Friedman on staff to handle those inevitable surprises that seem to throw the real Obama staff for a loop from time to time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/...tml?_r=1&em

[dirac]

Thanks, bart. Friedman was a good reporter once upon a time. I hope Obama doesn't pay too much attention to him as a rule, frankly, although I don’t doubt the speech in Oslo will have flattering references to our soldiers, as would only be appropriate.

[bart]

I agree, dirac, that Friedman is very inconsistent. I remember his reportage from Germany in the 90s as being first rate. But I'll stick to my two thoughts: the Obama regime has been more or less at sea about this matter, and Friedman has offered them a good way to turn it into something that will register as positive for the U.S. market.

[dirac]

the Obama regime has been more or less at sea about this matter, and Friedman has offered them a good way to turn it into something that will register as positive for the U.S. market.

Considering the Norwegians apparently blindsided them, I think the Administration has done well. Obama gave a modest and tactful statement in response to the news and apart from that I’m not sure what else he personally can do. The Administration is already playing it as an honor for the country and the American people in general, which seems reasonable enough, and Obama's approval ratings apparently went up a notch, although I'm not sure if the Nobel had anything to do with that.

(There is an argument to be made, as Quiggin noted earlier, that the award isn’t totally from left field, as it were, but it’s relatively complicated and it is best to let surrogates make it. )

[Estelle]

That event makes me think of, for example (that comparison is definitely not meant to be disrespectful) , a good student who gets a surprisingly high mark, with raving comments from the teacher, for a work most people, including himself, considered only as "promising" (and not finished)... and so the student finds himself somewhat embarrassed and has the difficult task to find an clever way to thank the teacher for the good mark while not looking pretentious...

[dirac]

Nicely put, Estelle.

[kfw]

I love Friedman's idea, but I've come to agree with his fellow Times columnist Ross Douthat, a conservative "conservative" next to David Brooks' more moderate approximation thereof, that Obama would have been smart to just turn the darn thing down.

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.

That he's an egotist, a narcissist, the subject of an early Carly Simon song, has always been one of the opposition's chief lines of attack. Turning the prize down would have been a strong symbolic refutatation of that charge, and, I think, would have been read internationaly as gravitas, not ingratitude.

[dirac]

Turning it down was a non-starter and most likely it would have made a less than ideal situation worse. Considerations of courtesy aside, for Obama to hand the honor back saying something along the lines of “I don’t deserve it” would only cause many of those same critics to say “ See! He admits he hasn’t done anything yet and look, he says so himself!” (I can also easily envision him getting criticized as arrogant for rejecting the prize.) And after all, it isn't bad that international opinion thinks so highly of the new guy. To that extent the justification for the award makes sense - just by Obama doing and saying the things he's doing and saying, he's making the world feel better about American power and American influence. (Whether we should be feeling better about what American power is doing is another question, but that's another topic.)

This piece by Hendrik Hertzberg sums up the situation Obama is in quite well, I think.

[SanderO]

He said he didn't feel he deserved it, was accepting it on behalf of the USA and would give the money to charity. I hope that having accepted the prize he feels more pressure to act as a man of peace and not the CIC of the world's largest military.

[kfw]

The test isn't whether Europe likes him this much or that much better than Bush, it's whether his policies have or have not saved lives, and telling the truth is always the best policy when you're trying to win over skeptics (not the immovable Right, but the self-declared independents, the swing votes he'll need in next year's Congressional races).

[dirac]

I thought he went as far as he reasonably could in that direction in his statement. As SanderO notes, he didn't accept it in his own behalf.

I think many people of all political views could see that the arrogance of the previous Administration (which, it should be noted, Bush had begun to walk back in his second term; he doesn't usually get credit for that) in its dealings the world didn't help the United States. I think the Prize was premature, but I also don't think it's such a bad thing and I doubt that the votes of anyone will be moved by it. Obama's fate will be determined by greater forces than the Nobel committee.

[Helene]

This piece by Hendrik Hertzberg sums up the situation Obama is in quite well, I think.

Although Hertzberg contends,

At least at the Olympics the judges wait till after the race to give you the gold medal.

while some would beg to differ that this always applies to judged sports, like figure skating, which is a much closer analogy to being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Quiggin]

I tend to be suspicious of "realists" like Ross Douthat, especially peevish comments like --

It’s voted on and handed out by a committee of five obscure Norwegians.

Hardly worldly and statesmanlike ... The problem with Friedman is that he goes "on this hand" & "on the other hand," for example on Egypt: I see elevator operators with prayer rugs in the corners of their elevators saying prayers before we go to another floor (=the past, to be jettsoned), but from trains I see camel drivers with mobile phones (+the future, heart thumping in his chest). His waffling on Iraq War II didn't help -- he ended up seeing a shining peaceful kingdom just within hands' reach, on the windowsill of history -- though he had previously done so much on the spot reporting that would have told him to be very, very skeptical -- as were most other Middle Eastern reporters of all political persuasions.

The Nobel was a real hot potato and I don't think Obama could have refused it. It would simply have be too impolite and insulting, and it wouldn't be in his character to do so. We'll have to see what he says in Stockholm. (And JFK didn't do much but give inspiring speeches and yet he seem to have a good effect on the world.)

(The FT suggests that one of the worse things to have happen to Obama was the resignation of Tom Daschle; with him on board none of the health care craziness would have happened.)

And OFF TOPIC, I did like this award to Carol W. Greider by the "obscure Norwegians." A bit of an interview with her from the Times (warning: a mild but substantial slap at Lawrence Summers ahead). The part at the end about her children is nice:

Q. MANY REPORTERS HAVE ASKED WHY TELOMERES RESEARCH SEEMS TO ATTRACT SO MANY FEMALE INVESTIGATORS. WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER?

A. There’s nothing about the topic that attracts women. It’s probably more the founder effect. Women researchers were fostered early on by Joe Gall, and they got jobs around the country and they trained other women. I think there’s a slight bias of women to work for women because there’s still a slight cultural bias for men to help men. The derogatory term is the “old boys network.” It’s not that they are biased against women or want to hurt them. They just don’t think of them. And they often feel more comfortable promoting their male colleagues.

When Lawrence Summers, then the Harvard president, made that statement a few years ago about why there were fewer successful women in science, I thought, “Oh, he couldn’t really mean that.”’ After reading the actual transcript of his statement, it seems he really did say that women can’t think in that sort of scientific fashion. It was ridiculous!

I mean, women do things differently, which is why I think it would be important if more women were at higher levels in academic medicine. I think people might work together more, things might be more collaborative. It would change how science is done and even how institutions are run. That doesn’t mean that women necessarily have a different way of thinking about the mechanics of experiments. I think it’s more a different social way of interacting that would bring results in differently.

Q. DO THIS YEAR’S NOBELS MEAN THAT WOMEN HAVE FINALLY BEEN ACCEPTED IN SCIENCE?

A. I certainly hope it’s a sign that things are going to be different in the future. But I’m a scientist, right? This is one event. I’m not going to see one event and say it’s a trend. I hope it is. One of the things I did with the press conference that Johns Hopkins gave was to have my two kids there. In the newspapers, there’s a picture of me and my kids right there. How many men have won the Nobel in the last few years, and they have kids the same age as mine, and their kids aren’t in the picture? That’s a big difference, right? And that makes a statement.

[sunday]

(...)

Q. DO THIS YEAR’S NOBELS MEAN THAT WOMEN HAVE FINALLY BEEN ACCEPTED IN SCIENCE?

(...)

Out of my head, Marie Curie and her daughter Irene would disagree. Or Hedy Lamarr.

[Quiggin]

Or Hedy Lamarr.

Thanks, sunday. I forgot about Hedy Lamarr as a scientist -- or mathematician. She was indeed the inventor of Wifi, along with George Antheil who helped her set up the 88 or so frequencies specified. Thanks to them all our phone calls or rather emails now go through a sort of Ballet Mecanique before they finally get to their destinations!

[dirac]

(And JFK didn't do much but give inspiring speeches and yet he seem to have a good effect on the world.)

OT- It is indeed necessary to distinguish between Kennedy as inspiration and Kennedy the actual chief executive (as you do). JFK was an impressive man in a number of ways but it might have been better to have Ike in there for a third term.

I do note that Kennedy was a legitimate war hero who had spent five years in the House and seven years in the Senate when he came to the Presidency. Obama is not that far removed from his stint in the Illinois state senate and he spent most of his time in the public eye before achieving the White House running for the next higher office, barely staying in the Senate long enough to find the men's room.....)

We'll have to see what he says in Stockholm.

Yes, indeed.

[Petra]

(And JFK didn't do much but give inspiring speeches and yet he seem to have a good effect on the world.)

As far as I know, JFK didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize either.

[papeetepatrick]

(And JFK didn't do much but give inspiring speeches and yet he seem to have a good effect on the world.)

As far as I know, JFK didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize either.

Yes, because his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis was brilliant, it's also true that it might not have been necessary had he not been so slack in his role in the execution of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

[Pamela Moberg]

I fear that President Obama will not say anything at all in Stockholm as he wont even go there

In the first post maybe, I explained that the Nobel Prize is divided between Norway and Sweden. History lesson follows:

Until 1905 Norway and Sweden were one country, then they broke that union and it was decided that Sweden would take care of the science and literary prizes, whereas Norway would award the Peace Prize. That is why there is a bit of confusion

But as he will be so close by, I think everybody would like a visit from the President, but it seems unlikely at the moment.

[dirac]

Thank you for the correction, Pamela. You did indeed explain it well for us.