Like a lot of people, I was very surprised at the news of President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

I was also a bit perplexed.

Now, before you accuse me of being another grumpy conservative that should just shut up and congratualte the President, hear me out. I don’t blame the President for this; after all it was the Nobel Committee that did this. My question is simply this: what has he done?

The President has only been in office for ten months. The Commitee says he wants to rid the world of nukes. I think that is a great goal and support it. But saying you want to rid the world of nuclear weapons and actually doing it are two different things. President Reagan also wanted to rid the world of nuclear weapons and worked with the Soviets to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in the world. I didn’t see the Nobel Committee giving him a prize.

Other Presidents have recieved the Prize. Teddy Roosevelt got it for negotiating peace between Russia and Japan. Woodrow Wilson won it in the efforts to create a lasting peace after the First World War. But President Obama has done little to deserve the prize other than not be George Bush. He’s talked about cooperation and all that which are wonderful things, but he hasn’t negotiated peace between the Israelis and Palestinians or spearheaded some deal to combat global warming. We have no idea what the next four to eight years will bring and how President Obama might change the world for the better.

We all know the reason that the Nobel Committee gave Obama the award: it was a way to give Bush the finger for his unilateral policy. I get that. I wasn’t a fan of a lot of Bush’s policy either. But the Nobel Committee was wrong to use this prize for a such childish political purposes.

Liberal commentator Peter Bienart echoes some of my thoughts:

…Obama will survive this award. The damage to the Nobel Committee itself will be greater. They’ve clearly fallen in love with celebrity, and with the idea of shaping the course of history—in other words, they’ve fallen in love with an absurdly grandiose conception of their role. The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that. Let’s hope Obama eventually deserves this award. And let’s hope the Nobel Committee’s decision meets with such a deafening chorus of chortles and jeers that it never does something this stupid again.

I hope that the President will “earn” this award. But I can tell you that I’ve lost a lot of faith in the Nobel Committee.