Interesting comment on Obama winning Peace Prize

[scrollgirl]

God knows I know nothing about how the committee goes around awarding Peace Prizes, but I found this comment in response to "shouldn't he have brought about actual peace first?" very interesting:
They're reasonable questions. But the Peace Prize has a long history of being awarded for effort, not achievement. Think of past recipients. There was a

Comments

[iphi1]

A specialist on the radio here said that the nobel prize is awarded mainly as a motivator for people to continue their good work and indeed not for achievement. Another factor they mentioned on the radio is that Obama gave the world hope. After the "axis of evil" we got "yes we can".

And you cannot underestimate how much Bush was reviled in Europe (and Nobel prizes are still a somewhat European affair). Bush was a warmonger. By comparison, Obama deserves the nobel prize for peace. Just for bringing change from Bush. (I think they graded on a sliding scale).

Personally, I think the Nobel Prize Committee also subconsciously did it to piss off Bush :)

[gaffsie]

I think there's a lot of truth in that. Besides, more often than not, the choice of winner ends up being debated endlessly.

[skieswideopen]

A friend of mine theorized that they awarded it to Obama because there was no diplomatic way to award it to the American people for not electing McCain. ;)

I don't know enough about the process to comment intelligently, but being nominated three two weeks into his term of office seems kind of premature to me.