The ridiculousness of Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize has been well-documented over the past twenty-four hours. Commentators on both the left and right have noted how undeserving Obama is of the award so I will have nothing to say about that. The question now is, does this help Obama or hurt him?
Not surprisingly, I think it hurts him. Coming on the heals of his Olympics humiliation and the take-off-the-gloves spoof from last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, it sets Obama up as an object of ridicule – the last thing he needs right now. The Olympics fiasco revealed more than any other episode in his still young presidency how self-absorbed Obama is. Even those who don’t pay much attention to the day-to-day happenings in Washington were paying attention to Obama’s Chicago bid, and he failed, miserably. The SNL do-nothing skit was devastating and it contributes to the growing public perception of the Obama administration as incompetent. Furthermore, it signals to other comedians that Obama is now fair game. I expect we will soon see other similar comedy skits and I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s pomposity were the subject, replete with his chin in the air, his imperious and patronizing manner, spouting seemingly grand but rhetorically empty nonsense. Jesse Jackson was a terrific sport back in the day when he poked fun at his own persona in the Green Eggs and Ham skit. But it worked for Jackson because he himself was doing the poking. Imagine, rather, some late-night comedian doing this to Barack Obama?
And now the undeserving Nobel prize. The inevitable jokes about Obama receiving the Heisman Trophy (he once criticized the BCS system), the Cy Young award (he threw out the first pitch at the All-Star game), an Emmy award, and every other award under the sun do him no good in this environment. It’s like piling on. It’s clear why the Eurotrash that make up the Nobel committee in Oslo gave Obama the award – to take another shot at George Bush and to perhaps constrain Obama on his decision to commit more troops to Afghanistan – but they did him no favors. The entire country is having fun with this.
The most common reaction to the award was the one I had yesterday morning when I saw the headline - “what has he done?” Well, the answer is that Obama has done, like the SNL skit says, nothing (don’t get me wrong – I’m glad he’s done nothing. When it comes to his radical domestic agenda doing nothing is a good thing.) He’s done nothing of consequence so far in his presidency other than the stimulus, which was a consequential failure. He now owns a moribund economy, a failed energy bill, and (so far) a failed health care bill. He dithers while his generals wait for an answer on Afghanistan and does nothing while the Iranians assemble the bomb. In other words, there is nothing positive going on for him to combat some of the inevitable ridicule that is attaching to him. He’s in danger of becoming a public joke, a man of no consequence, and a weak and ineffectual president. I take no glee in this. We live in a dangerous world and a weak president only emboldens our enemies – think Jimmy Carter. Despite his campaign rhetoric Obama has shown himself to be a man thoroughly of the left, with no bipartisan instincts. He will somehow have to shed these natural instincts, move to the center, and achieve some victories. The problem is, as I’ve said before, I don’t think the man is capable of compromise. It’s going to be a long four years.
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