How Obama Did Earn the Nobel Peace Prize Before February

On Friday, I excerpted Steve Benen's post on the aspirational nature of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama.

On Saturday afternoon, John Nichols made a different case in The Nation.

No, the Nobel Peace Prize is and should always be given with the purpose of honoring action not aspiration. The whole point of the award is to recognize bold, presumably courageous, endeavors in pursuit of a more peaceful and functional planet.

It is against this standard that the award to Obama should be measured.

To my view, he measures up.

I may have plenty of complaints about the man and his presidency. But I believe that Barack Obama did something that merits his selection as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

I am not talking here about an official act taken since he replaced the lamentable George Bush – although an argument can be made that replacing Bush's reign of error is sufficient accomplishment. What I'm talking about is actually something Obama did before his election – in fact, before his nomination as the Democratic Party's 2008 standard-bearer.

In those cattle-call presidential debates of 2007, Barack Obama staked out a position that was radically at odds with the lingering post-9/11 consensus among the American political and media elites. As a serious contender for the nomination – a candidate who had something to lose -- Obama declared for diplomacy.

In the July, 2007, "YouTube Debate," the Democratic candidates were asked if they would be willing to meet "with leaders of Syria, Iran, Venezuela" during their first term. Obama responded that, yes, he would be willing to do so. He explained that "the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this (Bush) administration -- is ridiculous."

He was right.

But he was immediately attacked for rejecting the "principle" – rooted in the Cold War but renewed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – that American foreign policy should continue to be conducted behind the tattered curtain of corruption that has given us unnecessary wars in Vietnam and Iraq, U.S.-sponsored coups from Iran to Chile, trade policies designed to serve multinational corporations and a seeming inability to hold up the banner of human rights or even humanity in Tibet, Darfur, Burma and so many other woefully neglected corners of the world.

Obama was immediately and savagely attacked by those who continued to embrace the Henry Kissinger approach to international relations.

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The pundits piled on. Obama, we were told, had revealed his inexperience. He was naïve. He was out-of-touch with "security moms" and other frightened Americans who wanted their leaders to speak loudly and swing big sticks.

In fact, Obama was entirely in touch with the American people, who had grown increasingly wary of the secretive and anti-democratic approach to global affairs that steered the United States out of the global community while telling the American people that foreign policy was the domain only of shadowy Kissingers and Cheneys.

Obama's nomination and election reflected that fact.

But, at the critical stage in the 2008 campaign, Obama did not know that declaring for diplomacy would prove to be politically smart. It required a level of courage that had been missing from American politics at the highest levels for a relatively new, largely untested candidate to take the stand he did. And that courage had an impact, ultimately moving other prominent Democrats – including Clinton – and even some Republicans toward more conciliatory stances.

Elections matter. They are the points at which countries stretch the parameters of their debates and, ideally, reform and renew themselves. But progress is only possible when prominent politicians break the mold, when they take risks that may cost them the political prizes they are so ardently pursuing.

Obama did that in the summer of 2007. And he did it on behalf of diplomacy. He argued that it was better to talk than to heighten tensions until there was no alternative to war.

It was a transformational moment for Obama's party, and ultimately for the politics of the world's dominant military superpower.

How transformational remains to be seen.

But there is more than enough justification in Obama's campaigning for the award of a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, for those who recognize how very rare it is for prominent politicians to take risks when it comes to national security debates, Obama is an entirely legitimate recipient of the peace prize.

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Obama is being honored for what he did as a contender for the presidency -- a contender whose winning run changed the political debate in a party and a country that desperately needed to take a new direction. As such, he is not merely worthy. Barack Obama, the candidate, is the right recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Read the whole thing.