Obama proves he is deserving of the Nobel Prize

Less than nine months into his first term as president, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the amazement of many, including himself.

While the 2009 award announcement surprised a lot of observers, it flat-out angered many others who felt Obama had done nothing to deserve it and therefore it was no more than an “affirmative action” gesture by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The angriest critics compared him to the two other sitting presidents — Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson — who received the award while they were in office, and to Jimmy Carter, a recipient 21 years after he had left the White House.

In their minds there were no similarities between the work of Obama and that of Wilson and Roosevelt. And although the detractors would consider both Carter and Obama failed presidents, even they thought Carter had earned his citation for the good work he had done once he had left office.

But when you go back and think about the reason the Nobel Committee chose Obama that year, it is clear that its members saw in this president the same “hope and change” that the American voters saw when they elected him to be their leader.

In a way, the committee was awarding the nation’s first black president for what they felt confident he would do, more than what he had done already in the name of peace and trying to bring the world together.

As it turns out, Obama has proved them right and has demonstrated to the American people and the rest of the world that he is most deserving of that prestigious prize.

The committee said the award was going to Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and that it “has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

The award announcement praised the president for creating “a new climate in international politics” in which multilateral diplomacy had once again taken a “central position,” stimulating disarmament and arms control negotiations, and getting the U.S. to play a “more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”

It went on to say, “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.”

The president indeed has risen to meet those high expectations represented by the Nobel Peace Prize.

The president has brought to an end the two longest wars in the nation’s history, extended a diplomatic hand to Cuba for the first time in over 50 years, helped usher in the Arab spring (although it still largely awaits the thaw of winter), continued to fight the negative impact of climate change, single-handedly pushed to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and, of course, passed a healthcare bill that allowed millions of Americans to have medical insurance.

A crowning achievement that speaks to the promise the Nobel Committee saw in Obama came this month when the framework for a deal with Iran was reached that would severely limit that country’s nuclear capability and eventually help Iran to re-enter the community of nations.

This president has kept his eyes on the prize while facing rabid resistance from the members of the opposition party who so want him to fail that they were willing to risk further economic harm to Americans and perhaps another war in the Middle East.

Yes, Obama clearly proves that the faith placed in him by the the Nobel Committee was not misguided.

“The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges,’” the 2009 announcement said.

If only more members of the U.S. Congress believed that.

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Obama proves he is deserving of the Nobel Prize."