Carter, Wilson, Obama - and occasionally Shemp
Culture 12:00 PM
by Nick Stone of Drawnlines Politics.
This Sunday's NY Times, ironically, said it best. In the Op-ed "Obama's Prize, Wilson's Legacy" author John Milton Cooper rightly drew parallels and paradoxes between the two presidents and their Nobel Prizes. Long story short, neither man deserved their prize. Then again, neither did Carter.
Now I know what you're thinking. "Hey, Teddy Roosevelt got one too!" Yes that's true. Roosevelt got his for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese war. I say he got it for actually mediating it, physically and personally getting involved and using the presidency and our military to browbeat and cajole from each party a compromise. Neither of them were happy, as is typical in any fair negotiation.
Roosevelt used our national exceptionalism to its fullest and paraded our steamships as a symbol of our power and status. He did not apologize for America, nor did he sell our own interests down river to achieve temporary peace. During his acceptance speech, Cooper points out that Roosevelt called for a "League of Nations" - an idea that he later backtracked on after the idea went from abstract to concrete and the inevitable disaster was apparent. Kudos to the president for both of his feats.
Admittedly, Obama's receipt of the Nobel Prize draws great mixed feelings in this blogger.
On one hand, the man has done absolutely nothing to deserve such an award. Nobel Prizes are awarded exclusively as achievement awards for people who have invented something or brokered peace or made the world a better place in some concrete way. Obama's Nobel seems to be a cajole from European Elitists for him to do what they would consider the "right thing." On ABC's This Week, Liz Cheney points out, “I think what the committee believes is that they would like to live in world in which America is not dominant and if you look at the language in the citation, you can see that they talk about President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to a majority of the world. You know, Americans don’t elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. They may believe that President Obama also doesn’t agree with American dominance, and they may be trying to affirm that belief with the prize. I think, unfortunately, that they may be right. I think it’s a concern.”
On the other hand, I'm often the first to criticize the president when he throws America under the bus and I don't want to be a hypocrite. This award was given to an American president and is implicitly a symbol of our strength and stature in the world. That transcends partisan politics, and you better bet your ass I'd expect people to congratulate George Bush if he got a peace prize for, let's say, keeping people safe by leveling the playing field against terror. Also, Obama didn't nominate himself for the award and politically it's done him as much damage as it has done him good. Sources say the president himself was shocked to learn of his new prize, and it really does put him in an awkward spot. So, yeah, I'm torn.
But the question remains - what has Obama actually done to deserve the award? Is it a testament to his foreign policy? That would be difficult because he has backtracked nearly every one of his campaign pledges at least once. We are still in Iraq after his deadline. We've already surged troops into Afghanistan and another surge may be imminent. Guantanamo is open and well, meanwhile many captives are being held indefinitely, AND prisoners are getting military tribunals, AND pictures of torture aren't being released. We've (re)marginalized both Amadinajad and Kim Jong Il, despite the browbeating Bush took over doing that same thing. We violate Pakistan's sovereignty weekly with unauthorized drone attacks. Et cetera, et cetera. So it can't possibly be that Obama's decisions to date have earned him a peace prize, or Bush would have had a mantle full of them.
The only plausible answer is that the Nobel Committee hopes that Obama's future foreign policy will be more to their liking, as Liz Cheney pointed out. Yes, the elitism and liberalism displayed by the Nobel Committee in their peace prize distribution is breathtaking. Let us remember clearly that neither Wilson nor Carter exactly had a stellar record on foreign (or domestic) policy. The rest of the world fell apart while Carter played house at Camp David, and 52 American hostages waited 444 days to be released because Carter dropped the ball on them. Actually, we can blame the overwhelming majority of our current situation in Iran on Carter's negligence. Likewise Wilson's League of Nations was such a disaster that we didn't even ratify the treaty ourselves, and he is known for his deathbed apology for ruining our country. Great examples of peacemakers?! The American people were so fed up with both of them that a tidal wave of Republicans were elected in their aftermath in 1920 and 1980.
With clowns like Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson receiving the prestigious awards for their flabbergasting foreign policy blunders, maybe it's no wonder at all that this president should follow in their footsteps. He should echo their foreign policy and accept his award as an uncompromising acceptance of American ambivalence and ineptitude. Should the script ever grow tiresome, Al Gore is always on call to play the relief role of Shemp (the fourth stooge). Meanwhile we can only watch in horror until the next election sweeps in another tidal wave of conservatives to clean up the mess.
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
For videos and archives visit our homepage
Check out our new Election Center!
This Sunday's NY Times, ironically, said it best. In the Op-ed "Obama's Prize, Wilson's Legacy" author John Milton Cooper rightly drew parallels and paradoxes between the two presidents and their Nobel Prizes. Long story short, neither man deserved their prize. Then again, neither did Carter.Now I know what you're thinking. "Hey, Teddy Roosevelt got one too!" Yes that's true. Roosevelt got his for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese war. I say he got it for actually mediating it, physically and personally getting involved and using the presidency and our military to browbeat and cajole from each party a compromise. Neither of them were happy, as is typical in any fair negotiation.
Roosevelt used our national exceptionalism to its fullest and paraded our steamships as a symbol of our power and status. He did not apologize for America, nor did he sell our own interests down river to achieve temporary peace. During his acceptance speech, Cooper points out that Roosevelt called for a "League of Nations" - an idea that he later backtracked on after the idea went from abstract to concrete and the inevitable disaster was apparent. Kudos to the president for both of his feats.
Admittedly, Obama's receipt of the Nobel Prize draws great mixed feelings in this blogger.
On one hand, the man has done absolutely nothing to deserve such an award. Nobel Prizes are awarded exclusively as achievement awards for people who have invented something or brokered peace or made the world a better place in some concrete way. Obama's Nobel seems to be a cajole from European Elitists for him to do what they would consider the "right thing." On ABC's This Week, Liz Cheney points out, “I think what the committee believes is that they would like to live in world in which America is not dominant and if you look at the language in the citation, you can see that they talk about President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to a majority of the world. You know, Americans don’t elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. They may believe that President Obama also doesn’t agree with American dominance, and they may be trying to affirm that belief with the prize. I think, unfortunately, that they may be right. I think it’s a concern.”
On the other hand, I'm often the first to criticize the president when he throws America under the bus and I don't want to be a hypocrite. This award was given to an American president and is implicitly a symbol of our strength and stature in the world. That transcends partisan politics, and you better bet your ass I'd expect people to congratulate George Bush if he got a peace prize for, let's say, keeping people safe by leveling the playing field against terror. Also, Obama didn't nominate himself for the award and politically it's done him as much damage as it has done him good. Sources say the president himself was shocked to learn of his new prize, and it really does put him in an awkward spot. So, yeah, I'm torn.
But the question remains - what has Obama actually done to deserve the award? Is it a testament to his foreign policy? That would be difficult because he has backtracked nearly every one of his campaign pledges at least once. We are still in Iraq after his deadline. We've already surged troops into Afghanistan and another surge may be imminent. Guantanamo is open and well, meanwhile many captives are being held indefinitely, AND prisoners are getting military tribunals, AND pictures of torture aren't being released. We've (re)marginalized both Amadinajad and Kim Jong Il, despite the browbeating Bush took over doing that same thing. We violate Pakistan's sovereignty weekly with unauthorized drone attacks. Et cetera, et cetera. So it can't possibly be that Obama's decisions to date have earned him a peace prize, or Bush would have had a mantle full of them.
The only plausible answer is that the Nobel Committee hopes that Obama's future foreign policy will be more to their liking, as Liz Cheney pointed out. Yes, the elitism and liberalism displayed by the Nobel Committee in their peace prize distribution is breathtaking. Let us remember clearly that neither Wilson nor Carter exactly had a stellar record on foreign (or domestic) policy. The rest of the world fell apart while Carter played house at Camp David, and 52 American hostages waited 444 days to be released because Carter dropped the ball on them. Actually, we can blame the overwhelming majority of our current situation in Iran on Carter's negligence. Likewise Wilson's League of Nations was such a disaster that we didn't even ratify the treaty ourselves, and he is known for his deathbed apology for ruining our country. Great examples of peacemakers?! The American people were so fed up with both of them that a tidal wave of Republicans were elected in their aftermath in 1920 and 1980.
With clowns like Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson receiving the prestigious awards for their flabbergasting foreign policy blunders, maybe it's no wonder at all that this president should follow in their footsteps. He should echo their foreign policy and accept his award as an uncompromising acceptance of American ambivalence and ineptitude. Should the script ever grow tiresome, Al Gore is always on call to play the relief role of Shemp (the fourth stooge). Meanwhile we can only watch in horror until the next election sweeps in another tidal wave of conservatives to clean up the mess.
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
For videos and archives visit our homepage
Check out our new Election Center!
Posted by Nick Stone
on 12:00 PM.
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